Unable to install urdf_tutorial on Indigo

Question

I'm attempting to follow the urdf_tutorial tutorial, but none of the packages it uses seem to be available in Indigo, even though the tutorial is tagged as Indigo. e.g. Trying to run any rosdep install command like:

rosdep install joint_state_publisher

just results in the error:

ERROR: Rosdep cannot find all required resources to answer your query
Missing resource joint_state_publisher
ROS path [0]=/opt/ros/indigo/share/ros
ROS path [1]=/home/user/git/myrobot/src
ROS path [2]=/opt/ros/indigo/share
ROS path [3]=/opt/ros/indigo/stacks

The tutorial is marked as compatible with Indigo. Is this classification incorrect? Why do none of the rosdep install commands work?

Edit: This looks like a major bug in rosdep. If I understand it's function correctly, it's supposed to be a wrapper around the underlying OS's package manager. So running rosdep install urdf-tutorial should have run sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-urdf-tutorial.

If I manually install ros-indigo-urdf-tutorial with apt-get, and then re-run rosdep, it reports everything is installed. So then what's the point of rosdep if I have to manually run apt-get to install everything? Should I uninstall rosdep and just rely on apt-get instead?

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Originally posted by Cerin on ROS Answers with karma: 940 on 2015-04-26

Post score: 0

Answer 1

rosdep is designed to install system dependencies for a source workspace. If you have a checkout of N packages in your source space, rosdep the tool will help you resolve and install the system dependencies.

If you've installed from apt, all your dependencies should already be resolved.

Please read through rosdep's documentation to find out more.

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Originally posted by tfoote with karma: 58457 on 2015-04-26

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by tfoote on 2015-04-26:
Note those rosdep commands were incorrectly added to the tutorial by a user trying to be helpful. I've removed them.

Comment by Cerin on 2015-04-26:
So then I should ingore all references to rosdep and manually install the appropriate ros-indigo-* packages manually? I followed the Indigo install instructions, yet most packages referred to in the tutorials don't seem to have been installed.