I have a ROS Indigo on a 64bit Kubuntu 14.04. Currently I'm facing a big issue - the missing module on_nurbs. I need it for the generation of meshes from point clouds.
My biggest problem here is the way ROS is hooked to PCL. Even though PCL is now more or less officially an external dependency the way ROS handles the situation is...Well, not very nice. I've experienced similar (maybe even the same - can't remember) issues with OpenCV - yet another dependency that was decided to be made completely external - when I decided to build it from source in order to add support Qt, OpenGL etc, which are not in the upstream packages of the library in the Ubuntu repositories. There is this thing ROS perception, which is supposed to add the glue between ROS and PCL.
The problem: Adding NURBS (part of the surface module)
What I have done so far:
I have
Currently I'm struggling to find out how to manually force CMake (and thus also catkin_make) to use my own version (not installed, only built). But I fear this will again interfere with ROS.
What is your advice for me in this situation? How can I proceed without yet again breaking my ROS installation? I would really like to learn how to add such missing bits and pieces - as mentioned above - I have already faced this issue once, now this and it will probably happen again.
PS for those who say "This is a ROS issue": I've already posted on ROS answers a week ago but there is still no reply and the views indicator of 11 (became so shortly after posting there - a week ago) is discouraging to say the least. The chances of any development there a week after posting the question are slim to none. I have been struggling with this issue for more then 2 weeks now...