sdformat: README

[azeey-test]

Configuration

• os: Windows

Links

• Live
• Source

Process

Step 1 - Instructions work

Step 2 - Images (if there are any) match the result

[khshmt]

Interested

[j-rivero]

Interested

go ahead

[khshmt]

Windows 10

I followed all windows instructions mentioned in the links, and installed "libsdformat" package version 9.8.0

[j-rivero]

Thanks for testing

[azeey]

@khshmt, can you try libsdformat 15.0.0 from the sdf15 branch since that's what is in Ionic?

[khshmt]

@azeey, I tried installing version 15.0.0 using conda but it not available the highest version available is 14.
If there are any other ways please tell me and I will try it.

[j-rivero]

probably you need to build it from source using vcs and colcon

[khshmt]

I also tried this, but to build from source the instructions in the links mention that I need to use conda to install gz-cmake4, gz-math8 and gz-utils3, where this versions are not also available in conda.

Again if I miss something please mention it and I will try it.

[azeey]

Ah, yeah, you won't be able to install Ionic versions from conda :(. @traversaro we don't have a good solution for this do we?

[traversaro]

Ah, yeah, you won't be able to install Ionic versions from conda :(. @traversaro we don't have a good solution for this do we?

Unfortunately not, the main difference between Ubuntu/macOS is that in Ubuntu and macOS we are using the openrobotics gazebo apt/homebrew repo that also hosts prereleases, while for Windows we rely on the official conda-forge repo. If somebody is really interested in this, possible solutions are:

Modify the conda-forge gz-* repos to also upload preleases

See https://conda-forge.org/docs/maintainer/knowledge_base/#pre-release-builds . However, this will require to modify the conda installation instructions to something like:

conda install libgz-cmake<#> libgz-math<#> libgz-tools<#> libgz-utils<#> --channel conda-forge --channel conda-forge/label/gz-cmake_dev --channel conda-forge/label/gz-math_dev --channel conda-forge/label/gz_tools_dev --channel conda-forge/label/gz_utils_dev

that is not particularly ergonomic.

Provide additional conda channel just for gazebo prereleases

One could setup a custom github repo to create conda package for gazebo repositories, and upload them to a gz-prereleases conda channel, so the command should be something like:

conda install libgz-cmake<#> libgz-math<#> libgz-tools<#> libgz-utils<#> --channel conda-forge --channel gz-prereleases

However, this is again non-trivial to do, especially dealing with all conda-forge ABI migrations, that you get for free if a package is hosted in conda-forge itself.

Conclusion

Both solutions are quite time-intensive both to setup and maintain, so personally I have no interest in doing so, but I can help anyone interested in working on this. In the short term I guess the easiest solution is just to document that you cannot follow those instructions to build a given gz-* package from source on Windows until a package is actually released, perhaps pointing them to the instructions to build a whole gazebo distribution from source instead (https://gazebosim.org/docs/latest/install_windows_src/?), that instead should work fine even for unreleased versions.

[j-rivero]

modifying the tutorial not to use conda packages in from-source (although I maintain a note if they exist) gazebosim/sdformat#1481

[j-rivero]

Both solutions are quite time-intensive both to setup and maintain, so personally I have no interest in doing so, but I can help anyone interested in working on this.

Extremely useful information Silvio, thanks! I keep it in mind for the upcoming changes with respect to Conda.