README

Contains scripts for generating Boost Python bindings for ROS (www.ros.org) message types.  Uses the roslib libraries for parsing the ROS message IDL.  It does two things:
* Defines code generation and CMake macros for exporting any ROS package's roscpp message definitions into Boost Python.  For each ROS package, these produce:
  * Boost Python wrappers of the autogenerated C++ message classes
  * Functions to convert between the Boost Python wrapped classes and the existing autogenerated ROS python message classes.
* Calls those macros for a few specific ROS packages: std_msgs, geometry_msgs, sensor_msgs, nav_msgs.

Example usage of the exported messages from Python (note rosh is basically an Ipython shell with ROS-related helper functions):

$ rosh

In [1]: roslib.load_manifest('boost_python_ros')

In [2]: import geometry_msgs_boost as gmb                                                                                                                            
~/dev/world_model/boost_python_ros/munged/std_msgs_boost.py:5: RuntimeWarning: to-Python converter for std::vector<signed char, std::allocator<signed char> > already regis
tered; second conversion method ignored.                                                                                                                                               
~/dev/world_model/boost_python_ros/munged/geometry_msgs_boost.py:5: RuntimeWarning: to-Python converter for std::vector<double, std::allocator<double> > already registered
; second conversion method ignored.                                                                                                                                                    

In [3]: p = gmb.cpp.Pose()

In [4]: p
Out[4]: <geometry_msgs_cpp.Pose object at 0x8f3766c>

In [5]: p.position.x = 42

In [6]: p.orientation.w = 24

In [7]: p2 = p.to_ros()

In [8]: print p2
position: 
  x: 42.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
orientation: 
  x: 0.0
  y: 0.0
  z: 0.0
  w: 24.0

In [9]: p2.position.x = 1000

In [10]: p3 = p2.to_boost()

In [11]: p3.position.x 
Out[11]: 1000.0

In [12]: p3.orientation.w
Out[12]: 24.0

In [13]: