<> {{{#!wiki yellow Note: This is a legacy, rosbuild based, version of the ROS Filesystem Concepts }}} <> == Overview == The ''manifest'' (`manifest.xml`) is a minimal specification about your [[rosbuild/Packages|package]] and supports a wide variety of ROS tools, from compilation to documentation to distribution. In addition to providing a minimal specification of metadata about your package, an important role of manifests is to declare dependencies in a language-neutral and operating-system-neutral manner. The presence of a `manifest.xml` file in a directory is significant: any directory within your ROS package path that contains a `manifest.xml` file is considered to be a package [1]. The bare minimum manifest file is much like a readme file, stating who wrote your package and what license it is under. The license is important as packages are means by which ROS code is distributed. The most common manifest files also include `` and `` tags, which help manage the installation and use of a package. The `` tag points to another ROS package that must be installed. It can have a variety of meanings depending on the contents of the package it is pointing to. For example, for [[rospy]] code, a depend declares that the other package should be added to the `PYTHONPATH`. For [[roslaunch]] files, a depend may indicate that this package includes [[roslaunch]] files from the other package. The `` tag describes language-specific build and runtime flags that should be used by any package that depends on your package. For a package containing [[roscpp]] code, an export tag may declare header files and libraries that should be picked by any package that depends on it. [1]: Packages cannot contain packages. == XML Reference == Please see the [[http://www.ros.org/doc/independent/api/rospkg/html/manifest_xml.html|manifest.xml tags reference]]. == Example == {{{ long description goes here, XHTML is allowed Alice/alice@somewhere.bar, Bob/bob@nowhere.foo BSD http://pr.willowgarage.com/ http://pr.willowgarage.com/blog/photos/sensor_head1_500.jpg }}} == Types of Dependencies == The most common type of dependency that is expressed by a manifest is a dependency on another [[rosbuild/Packages|package]], which is expressed by the `` tag. As explained earlier, the exact meaning of this dependency depends on the code involved and may either mean a compile-time dependency or runtime dependency. A manifest can also declare dependencies on thirdparty software provided by the operating system, which is expressed by the `` tag. For example, your package may need boost: {{{ }}} By declaring this, users can now use the [[rosdep]] tool to install boost. `rosdep` will examine their operating system, find the appropriate package manager and package name, and install it. == Tools == [[rospack]] parses and retrieves information from `manifest.xml` files. For example, {{{rospack depends package-name}}} will tell you all of the dependencies of `package-name` (use `depends1` to retrieve the direct dependencies). == Client Library Support == In Python, you can use the [[rospkg]] library to load manifest information.