ROS Style Guide and ros_lint¶

Motivation¶

The ROS Scan-N-Plan application from Exercise 4.0 is complete, tested and documented. Now we want to clean up the code according to the style guide so other developers can easily understand our work.

Information and Resources¶

The Official ROS C++ Style Guide

Automated Style Guide Enforcement

Scan-N-Plan Application: Problem Statement¶

We have completed and tested our Scan-N-Plan program from Exercise 4.0 and we need to release the code to the public. Your goal is to ensure the code we have created conforms to the ROS C++ Style Guide.

Scan-N-Plan Application: Guidance¶

Configure Package¶

Add a build dependency on roslint to your myworkcell_core package’s package.xml:
```
<build_depend>roslint</build_depend>
```
Add roslint to the find_package(...) command in the CMakeLists.txt file:
```
find_package(catkin REQUIRED COMPONENTS
 ...
 roslint
)
```
Invoke roslint from the CMakeLists.txt file
```
roslint_cpp()
```

Run roslint¶

To run roslint:

catkin build myworkcell_core --make-args roslint

The output of roslint for the ScanNPlan class from Exercise 4.0 indicates that there are several issues regarding formatting

/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/myworkcell_node.cpp:0:  No copyright message found.  You should have a line: "Copyright [year] <Copyright Owner>"  [legal/copyright] [5]
/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/myworkcell_node.cpp:9:  Single-parameter constructors should be marked explicit.  [runtime/explicit] [5]
/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/myworkcell_node.cpp:54:  Lines should be <= 120 characters long  [whitespace/line_length] [2]
/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/myworkcell_node.cpp:54:  At least two spaces is best between code and comments  [whitespace/comments] [2]
/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/myworkcell_node.cpp:54:  Add #include <string> for string  [build/include_what_you_use] [4]
Done processing /home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/myworkcell_node.cpp
/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/vision_node.cpp:0:  No copyright message found.  You should have a line: "Copyright [year] <Copyright Owner>"  [legal/copyright] [5]
/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/vision_node.cpp:12:  Single-parameter constructors should be marked explicit.  [runtime/explicit] [5]
/home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/vision_node.cpp:23:  Should have a space between // and comment  [whitespace/comments] [4]
Done processing /home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/vision_node.cpp
Total errors found: 8

Once these issues are corrected, the output of roslint should look like this:

Done processing /home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/myworkcell_node.cpp
Done processing /home/ros-industrial/ros/catkin_ws/src/myworkcell_core/src/vision_node.cpp
Total errors found: 0