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~beginner decrypting the workings of ROS~ hmm.. how to phrase this.. well, partly, I'm wondering

  1. if I need to also be in my catkin workspace before roslaunching...
  2. what is the difference between the catkin and roslaunch?
  3. I understand that the catkin is like a framework/build system basically for package management??
  4. So now that I'm learning about nodes, I'm wondering, how is the node different from a catkin built package?
  5. How are roslaunch and associated tools, different from catkin?

Originally posted by moonspacedancer on ROS Answers with karma: 123 on 2017-08-24

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Comment by jayess on 2017-08-24:
There's a lot of questions here... Have you gone through the tutorials?

Comment by jayess on 2017-08-24:
I edited your question to make it a bit easier to see all the questions.

Comment by gvdhoorn on 2017-08-25:
I think that the Getting Started pages might be more suitable for a first introduction, especially when the questions are more of a conceptual nature.

Comment by gvdhoorn on 2017-08-25:
@binarybabe: it might be helpful for you to go get a book or two about ROS. Some are even free. See wiki/Books. A good one is probably: A Gentle Introduction to ROS.

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  1. No, you don't need to be in your workspace to run roslaunch, you can roslaunch from anywhere.
  2. catkin is used to create and build packages and roslaunch starts up nodes, sets parameters, etc.
  3. As @gvdhoorn pointed out in the comments, catkin

is a wrapper around CMake that makes building entire ROS workspaces easier / feasible. Package management is expressly not part of its responsibilities.

  1. A node is a program and a catkin package is a place that houses nodes and certain files.
  2. See #2.

Originally posted by jayess with karma: 6155 on 2017-08-24

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Original comments

Comment by gvdhoorn on 2017-08-25:
@jayess: no, catkin is not a framework for package management. It is a wrapper around CMake that makes building entire ROS workspaces easier / feasible. Package management is expressly not part of its responsibilities.

Comment by jayess on 2017-08-25:
@gvdhoorn: thanks for pointing out my error. I updated the answer based on your comment.

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