hi all 
after some feedback from r/ROS, i have released an initial version of the idea. the installation is pretty easy so if you got the time, pls try it and let me know your thoughts. i would gladly take prs or ideas here if you got any.
9 Likes
This looks nice!
Why is the repo not a ROS package itself? If it were, the installation would be just colcon build. And you could release it via the official channels.
And one feature suggestion: what I do quite often is a kind of “backtracking” - you have a topic and you don’t know who publishes it. So ros2 topic info. Ahh, now you have a node name. So ros2 node info and you have the list of topics from which the original one is made. Now you select one of them and go one or more of these rounds until you find a “root cause” topic or node. I think this use case could be much easier in this tree-like tool (e.g. if each node item in the listing could be expanded to show its subscribed topics).
3 Likes
ah yes! i’ll definitely look into it. this way, correct me if i am wrong, it can be distributed as ros-ros2tree-humble etc etc right? or some other way through the ros repos?
as for your second question, that’s an interesting application for the tool already! i think one can open up another panel but with a tree for nodes along side topic. wouldn’t that solve the problem? for ex, above is the topic tree and below is the node tree:
That’s right. The process is described here: Releasing a Package — ROS 2 Documentation: Kilted documentation . For the first time, it may seem longish, but later releases are not that difficult.
Yes, that’s it. I think I misinterpreted the first screenshot a bit, thinking that the package provides an interactive (e.g. ncurses-based) TUI. But that would be much more work…
1 Like
hey, thx for the suggestion! i have worked on an initial version of the pkg, you can find it on the branch humble. i have also created a pr for the pkg to be added to the ros index
1 Like