How to catkin_make_isolated a non-catkin package when CMakeLists.txt not in pkg root

Question

Hi,

We'd like to make our projects self-contained, so we are adding all possible (external) packages to our GIT repo as submodule, and build our project with catkin_make_isolated. This works with Ceres, Google Cartographer, etc., but does not seem to be working with some other module.

I added it as submodule, but the problem (apart from the missing package.xml, which I created) is that the CMakeLists.txt file is in a cmake/ directory, not in the package root. It looks like catkin_make_isolated fails to find the cmake/CMakeLists.txt file.

Moving or symlinking does not work, as the file uses other files in the cmake/ directory.

Is there a way to force catkin to look for CMakeLists.txt in cmake/?

Thanks.

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Originally posted by shardator on ROS Answers with karma: 43 on 2018-07-24

Post score: 1

Answer 1

While knowing more specifics about which package you're looking at would help give a more confident answer, I think the following may help:

1. Add a new top-level CMakeLists.txt file in the location catkin is expecting
2. Fill it with the basics (cmake_mininum_required(..), project(...), etc.)
3. Use add_subdirectory(cmake) to tell catkin to look in the 'cmake' directory for another CMakeLists.txt file

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Originally posted by mbarulic with karma: 51 on 2018-07-24

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 2

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Original comments

Comment by shardator on 2018-07-24:
Hi! Thank you, this solved the problem! I tried add_subdirectory before, but I did something wrong. Now everything is fine. (The package was google protocol buffer, protobuf3.)