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Running rqt_smach (smach_viewer) with ROS Kinetic
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rqt_smach_kinetic.md

Running rqt_smach (smach_viewer) with ROS Kinetic

Hello everyone!

As we needed Smach for an university project I decided to take a look in porting rqt_smach / smach_viewer to ROS Kinetic. Some things may still be broken but at least it is working at all!

NOTE: This is kind of work in progress - I'd love to get any feedback and will merge updates if you want to contribute any fixes! I will try to get into contact with jbohren but for the most recent issues and pull requests he was not willing to cooperate - that's surely one of the reasons why there is no kinetic support so far

This file is based on the instructions made by @jbohren in this file: rqt_smach.md - which is hard to find on the internet.

tl;dr

Clone xdot, executive_smach and executive_smach_visulization into your catkin workspace. Now run catkin_make / catkin build to build the packages. That's it - start rqt_smach by executing rosrun rqt_smach rqt_smach!

The longer explanation

As jbohren states in his document you have to

To run rqt_smach, you must have [executive_smach_visulization] 1, [xdot] 2,and [executive_smach] 3 in your [catkin workspace] 4. Then build those packages using [catkin build] 5 or [catkin_make] 6. Once the packages are built, make sure you have a [roscore] 7 running,source your environment, and then execute the following command: rosrun rqt_smach rqt_smach --> The three mentioned packages are versions by himself, so far I did not try out if any of those can be replaced with the original version (mainly interesting for xdot).

I ported jbohrens smach visualization to ROS kinetic which you can find on my account executive_smach_visualization Also you need an updated version of xdot which you will find here: xdot. Both are on the kinetic branch. Finally clone executive_smach itself. Now run catkin_make / catkin build to build the packages. Once the packages are built, make sure you have a roscore running,source your environment, and then execute the following command: rosrun rqt_smach rqt_smach

Known bugs: Zooming with the scroll wheel appears to be kind of broken, but zooming with ctrl+page[up/down] is working.

Tested on ROS Kinetic, Ubuntu 16.04.

@iglstone
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iglstone commented Apr 6, 2017

Thanks very much, great help!

@josephcoombe
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Thanks for the gist. A few follow-up questions if you've got a moment to spare:

  1. As of now, April 2018, which of these repos is the best option for SMACH Visualization with ROS Kinetic?
    https://github.com/jbohren/executive_smach_visualization
    https://github.com/matt3o/executive_smach_visualization
    https://github.com/ros-visualization/executive_smach_visualization

  2. What is the difference between rqt_smach and smach_viewer?

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