Installing Python scripts and modules

Even if your_package only contains Python code, it still needs a catkin CMakeLists.txt to install executable scripts and to export modules so they can be imported in other ROS packages.

Scripts

ROS executables are installed in a per-package directory, not the distributions’s global bin/ directory. They are accessible to rosrun and roslaunch, without cluttering up the shell’s $PATH, and their names only need to be unique within each package. There are only a few core ROS commands like rosrun and roslaunch that install in the global bin/ directory.

Standard ROS practice is to place all executable Python programs in a package subdirectory named nodes/ or scripts/. Their usage is the same, the two names distinguish ROS nodes from other executable Python scripts. To keep the user API clean, executable script names generally do not include a .py suffix. Your CMakeLists.txt should install all the scripts explictly using the special install function catkin_install_python. This will make sure that shebang lines are updated to use the specific Python version used at configure time:

catkin_install_python(PROGRAMS nodes/your_node scripts/another_script
                      DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_BIN_DESTINATION})

Another good practice is to keep executable scripts very short, placing most of the code in a module which the script imports and then invokes:

#! /usr/bin/env python
import your_package.main
if __name__ == '__main__':
    your_package.main()

Modules

Standard ROS practice is to place Python modules under the src/your_package subdirectory, making the top-level module name the same as your package. Python requires that directory to have an __init__.py file, too.

Note

With rosbuild, it was possible to place Python modules directly within src/. That violated Python setup conventions, and catkin does not allow it. If you need to define a module named your_package, place its code in src/your_package/__init__.py or import its public symbols there.

Catkin installs Python packages using a variant of the standard Python setup.py script. Assuming your modules use the standard ROS layout, it looks like this:

## ! DO NOT MANUALLY INVOKE THIS setup.py, USE CATKIN INSTEAD

from distutils.core import setup
from catkin_pkg.python_setup import generate_distutils_setup

# fetch values from package.xml
setup_args = generate_distutils_setup(
    packages=['your_package'],
    package_dir={'': 'src'})

setup(**setup_args)

This setup.py is only for use with catkin. Remember not to invoke it yourself.

Put that script in the top directory of your package, and add this to your CMakeLists.txt:

catkin_python_setup()

That takes care of installing your Python modules. Never use it to install executable scripts. Use the catkin_install_python() command shown above.