Buliding the Astrobee API with Ubuntu 20.04

[SenorGentleHands]

The Astrobee ROS instructions for building the ROS packages recommend Ubuntu 20.04. However, the Astrobee Android API build instructions indicate that users need to install ros-kinetic-rosjava in order to build the ff_msgs jar, which cannot be installed properly on Ubuntu 20.04 (or possibly 18.04).

When using Ubuntu 20.04 I can only install ROS Noetic, so I tried to install ros-kinetic-rosjava from source from this repo found using the ROS Wiki Source Installation Instructions. When I try to build ff_msgs using the command make ff_msgs_generate_messages_java_gradle, I get the following output:

ERROR: the following packages/stacks could not have their rosdep keys resolved to system dependencies:
rosjava_messages: Cannot locate rosdep definition for [world_canvas_msgs]
genjava: No definition of [python-catkin-pkg] for OS version [focal]

The error output indicates that the issue is caused by dependencies that have changed between the two ROS versions. The Astrobee ROS instructions indicate that the robot hardware on ISS currently runs Ubuntu 16.04, which is supported by ROS Kinetic. I am currently trying Ubuntu 16.04 to see if that works.

[SenorGentleHands]

Installing Ubuntu 16.04 resolved this issue. I would recommend adding system requirements to the readme.

[trey0]

As we are planning to transition the ISS Astrobees to Ubuntu 20.04 and generally advise new guest science developers to work in 20.04, we should probably try to fix this dependency issue and make 20.04 a viable platform for astrobee_android development.

This might mean doing a minimal custom port of ros-kinetic-rosjava to create a stand-in for the missing ros-noetic-rosjava package, or some other approach.

As noted earlier, staying on Ubuntu 16.04 is a viable interim workaround, but going forward, it will at least be confusing and inconvenient to require 16.04 just for astrobee_android development, while 20.04 is recommended generally.

[rgarciaruiz]

Our approach to addressing this issue with other users so far has been to provide/generate the necessary JAR files (built with Ubuntu 16) and use kinetic on Android while keeping the simulator on Ubuntu 20 (noetic).

Of course, this might not work for all use cases (and it's inconvenient) so we are looking into other options as well.

Documentation is lagging behind but we are working on it, so we appreciate your feedback.

[marinagmoreira]

I would add that we have an example on how to generate these jar files with docker on Ubuntu 20.04 in https://github.com/nasa/isaac/blob/master/scripts/docker/build_apk.Dockerfile and it is part of the isaac CI in https://github.com/nasa/isaac/blob/master/.github/workflows/apk.yaml (meaning it runs every time someone does a commit).

I would also point out that in 18.04 I only built the jars and the apk compiled natively, but in 20.04 I had to put the entire flow inside the Docker image. (https://github.com/nasa/isaac/blob/v0.2.5/scripts/docker/build_msgs_jar.Dockerfile and https://github.com/nasa/isaac/blob/v0.2.5/.github/workflows/apk.yaml)

[bcoltin]

We believe Ruben fixed this.