I am a beginner in using ROS.
I installed lunar version of ROS using the following command
sudo apt-get install ros-lunar-desktop-full
My doubt is can I do the following?
sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-desktop-full
sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-desktop-full
Is it safe to install multiple distributions?
Any extra precautions to take?
Originally posted by hagm on ROS Answers with karma: 17 on 2018-01-17
Post score: 0
Short answer: yes, as long as the packages for that ROS version have been released for your OS.
See REP-3 for which ROS versions have been released for which OS.
My doubt is can I do the following?
sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-desktop-full
sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-desktop-full
No, because as you can see in REP-3, there is no overlap in the OS supported by Indigo and Kinetic.
You could install Kinetic next to Lunar, as they both support Ubuntu Xenial.
Is it safe to install multiple distributions?
I'm not sure what the question is: what do you define as 'safe'? No packages from one ROS distribution should overwrite any files from others (that is enforced by apt), if that is what you are worried about.
Any extra precautions to take?
Don't try to source the setup.bash of both and expect to be able to mix-and-match packages. As long as you keep things separated, you should be fine.
Edit: I should've closed this question, as there are way too many duplicates of it already:
and so on.
Originally posted by gvdhoorn with karma: 86574 on 2018-01-17
This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site
Post score: 3
Comment by gvdhoorn on 2018-01-17:
Note that if you really want / need to, a source install of Indigo on Ubuntu Xenial might be possible. It's probably going to be some work though (if at all possible).
