Working with ROS kinetic and Matlab, overwriting messge definitions

I have Ubuntu 16.04 installed with ROS kinetic. Matlab Robotic system toolbox only supports Indigo and Hydro, but I know that it is still possible to use Robotic System Toolbox also with kinetic.

However there are some messages that have been update in ROS system between the versions and I was thinking if it is possible to overwrite the ROS messages used by Robotic System Toolbox?

One specific service that I would like to update is the GetModel in gazebo_msgs package. The definition has changed so that the responce now has Header included http://docs.ros.org/kinetic/api/gazebo_msgs/html/srv/GetModelState.html http://docs.ros.org/indigo/api/gazebo_msgs/html/srv/GetModelState.html.

I tried to create custom messages from kinetic version of gazebo_msgs. It creates the messages but the old(indigo) messages are also now still present. Is there possibility to remove the gazebo_msgs(indigo) package from Robotic System Toolbox and replace it with my the custom messages(kinetic)?

Answer 1

[Gillian Rosen]

Hi Antti, 

I understand that you have defined the Kinetic version of the gazebo_msgs package to use with your ROS Kinetic setup, and you would like to overwrite the default Indigo version of gazebo_msgs in MATLAB with the Kinetic one. 

You can add the 'before' token to your javaclasspath.txt file to have MATLAB use your JAR file instead of the builtin one. Please see this MATLAB Answers post for directions: 

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/283695-updating-existing-custom-message-types-with-rosgenmsg

[Antti]

This was exactly what I was looking for. Now the gazebo/turtlebot examples are working correctly when gazebo is running on kinetic.

Thank you!