Consider a rclnodejs tools package #756

re. #2 when I started participating on rclnodejs about 12 months I felt it would not be too big a leap to extend rclnodejs with additional tools for JS developers to achieve parity with the C++ and Python ROS dev environments. In previous comments I referenced the experimental project, ros2pkg_configure_nodejs package, a ros2cli extension that overlays and configures a nodejs-rclnodejs resources onto an existing ROS2 package directory. What I believe future ros-nodejs developers would appreciate is tooling that will create a full ROS package preconfigured with nodejs-rclnodejs. Such a tool could be accessed from either the ros2 commandline, e.g., ros2 pkg create-nodejs <pkg-name>, and also from a custom nodejs cli tool, e.g., create-rosjs-package <package-name>. And when the ros2cli team opens up the app to support additional build-types it will be a small work to adapt our tools to fit in. But for the near future it would not be too much additional work to implement such a tool based on the ros2pkg_configure_nodejs. Based on your insight and feedback, I can implement an initial version on ros2jsguy account for evaluation. And once we have decided how we want to organize tools then move the project over.

If we own an organization, I think ros2_nodejs is a proper name for the org, but considering we are under RWT, I prefer we follow the naming convention of ROS2 upstream, which is rcl + <language name> for the clients. What's your opinion about the name of your ros2pkg_configure_nodejs if we create a new repo for it under RWT.

I prefer we follow the naming convention of ROS2 upstream, which is rcl + for the clients. What's your opinion

+1

Status: I have working version of a cli tool (unix only atm) that will create a ROS2-nodejs package. The tool can be run from either the ros2 cli or from a shell commandline.

example from ros2 cli:

> ros2 pkg -h
> ros2 pkg create_nodejs MyJSRobot --typescript

Question: As an alternative to running this tool from the ros2 cli, a developer can run it from a shell commandline. What would you think of a top-level command with subcommands such as:

> rclnodejs -h
> rclnodejs create-package myJSRobot
> rclnodejs generate-messages
> rclnodejs generate-example

One way this can work is we create a new node pkg, e.g., rclnodejs-tools, that a user will install globally, e.g., npm i -g rclnodejs-tools. From there the user can run rclnodejs -h to view available commands and options. We can then extend this package with commandline utilities as needed over time.

This weekend I'll commit a working example that we can test drive and assess.

Thoughts?

+1 An independent node package seems more suitable for this scenario and about the name

• For the npm package: rclnodejs-cli
• For the command, I think rclnodejs is good