ROS package access

The RosPack class provides APIs similar to the rospack command-line tool distributed with ROS. Like rospack, its provides information about package and stack dependency information, filesystem locations, and manifest access. The Python API is more efficient than shelling out to rospack as provides caching and other optimizations for repeated querying.

rospkg.MANIFEST_FILE

Name of package manifest file, i.e. ‘manifest.xml’.

rospkg.get_package_name(path) → str[source]

Get the name of the ROS package that contains path. This is determined by finding the nearest parent manifest.xml file. This routine may not traverse package setups that rely on internal symlinks within the package itself.

Parameters

path – filesystem path

Returns

Package name or None if package cannot be found, str

class rospkg.RosPack([ros_paths=None])[source]

Query information about ROS packages on the local filesystem. This includes information about dependencies, retrieving stack Manifest instances, and determining the parent stack of a package.

RosPack can be initialized with the default environment, or its environment configuration can be overridden with alternate ROS path settings.

NOTE 1: for performance reasons, RosPack caches information about packages

NOTE 2: RosPack is not thread-safe.

Example:

from rospkg import RosPack
rp = RosPack()
packages = rp.list()
path = rp.get_path('rospy')
depends = rp.get_depends('roscpp')
depends1 = rp.get_depends('roscpp', implicit=False)
Parameters

ros_paths – Ordered list of paths to search for resources. If None (default), use environment ROS path.

get_ros_paths() → [str]

Get ROS paths of this instance

ros_paths

Get ROS paths of this instance

get_manifest(name) → Manifest

Get the Manifest of the specified package.

Parameters

name – package name, str

Raises

InvalidManifest

list() → [str]

List packages.

Returns

complete list of package names in ROS environment

get_path(name) → str
Parameters

name – package name, str

Returns

filesystem path of package

Raises

ResourceNotFound

get_depends(name[, implicit=True]) → [str]

Get explicit and implicit dependencies of a package.

Parameters

  • name – package name, str

  • implicit – include implicit (recursive) dependencies, bool

Returns

list of names of dependencies.

Raises

InvalidManifest

get_depends_on(name[, implicit=True]) → [str]

Get list of packages that depend on a package. If implicit is True, this includes implicit (recursive) dependency relationships.

Parameters

  • name – package name, str

  • implicit – include implicit (recursive) dependencies, bool

Returns

list of names of dependencies, [str]

Raises

InvalidManifest

get_rosdeps(package[, implicit=True]) → [str][source]

Collect rosdeps of specified package into a dictionary.

Parameters

  • package – package name, str

  • implicit – include implicit (recursive) rosdeps, bool

Returns

list of rosdep names.

stack_of(package) → str[source]
Parameters

package – package name, str

Returns

name of stack that package is in, or None if package is not part of a stack

Raises

ResourceNotFound: if package cannot be located