Unable to include headers found in devel/include, generated by grpc

[9a3eedi]

I have a project (let's call it parrot_common_wrapper) that uses grpc to generate headers from protobuf. protobufs are found in parrot_common_wrapper/parrot-common/tctm/, and an example of a protobuf is Echo.pb. These headers are then installed into devel/include in the root directory, no further subdirectories. I can see this myself.

I have another project (let's call it parrot_comm) in which I would like to include these generated headers, but for the life of me I couldn't get it to work. It simply could not find the requested header file. I have tried the following to include it:

#include "Echo.pb.h"
#include "tctm/Echo.pb.h"
#include "parrot_common/tctm/Echo.pb.h"
#include "parrot_common_wrapper/Echo.pb.h" 
#include "parrot_common_wrapper/parrot-common/tctm/Echo.pb.h"

But none of these work, all giving me the same error: that the file is not found

Here is my CMakeLists for parrot_comm:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.3)
project(parrot_comm)

find_package(catkin REQUIRED COMPONENTS
  roscpp
  grpc
  std_msgs
  parrot_common_wrapper
)

catkin_package(
	#  INCLUDE_DIRS include
	# LIBRARIES parrot_common_wrapper ${ALL_PROTOBUF_LIBS}
  CATKIN_DEPENDS roscpp std_msgs parrot_common_wrapper
#  DEPENDS system_lib
)

include_directories(
	#include
  ${catkin_INCLUDE_DIRS}
)

add_executable(parrot_comm src/parrot_comm.cpp)

target_link_libraries(parrot_comm ${catkin_LIBRARIES} parrot_common_wrapper)

And here is the CMakeLists for the parrot_common_wrapper project

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.3)
project(parrot_common_wrapper)

find_package(catkin REQUIRED COMPONENTS
  grpc
  roscpp
)

catkin_package(
#  INCLUDE_DIRS include
 LIBRARIES parrot_common_wrapper
#  CATKIN_DEPENDS grpc roscpp
#  DEPENDS system_lib
)

set(TCTM_DIR ./parrot-common/tctm)

include_directories(
# include
  ${catkin_INCLUDE_DIRS}
)

generate_proto(parrot_common_wrapper SRC_BASE ${TCTM_DIR} FILES 
	${TCTM_DIR}/Subsystem.proto
	${TCTM_DIR}/Echo.proto
	${TCTM_DIR}/Telemetry.proto
	${TCTM_DIR}/Telecommand.proto
)

What am I missing? I'm sorry if this is a very trivial problem, I've been dragging my hair out for a whole day trying to fix this.

[BillWSY]

I was not able to reproduce the problem (using some of my catkin_grpc_examples packages). In theory, #include "Echo.pb.h" should work. Can you confirm in package.xml, parrot_comm build_depend on parrot_common_wrapper?

Also, if you can provide a minimal example to reproduce this issue (preferable a GitHub repository), I am happy to take a look into.

(I removed my previous comments because I missed some details in your issues -- sorry)

[BillWSY]

Also, some other mistakes in your CMakeLists.txt

parrot_common_wrapper:

catkin_package(
 LIBRARIES parrot_common_wrapper ${ALL_PROTOBUF_LIBS}
 CATKIN_DEPENDS grpc
)

parrot_comm:

target_link_libraries(parrot_comm ${catkin_LIBRARIES})

[9a3eedi]

I fixed the mistakes you mentioned and also confrmed that parrot_comm's package.xml has a build_depend on parrot_common_wrapper. However I'm still facing the same problem.

I've attached a minimum example. Just extract this into a freshly made catkin workspace. I tried to recreate the same folder structure I am using now, in case it is relevant. The "protobuf_package" contains the protobufs and is equivalent to the "parrot_common_wrapper" package I'm using, and the "linked_package" is trying to use the header built from the protobuf_package, i.e. equivalent to "parrot_comm" in my case. I am facing the exact same issue with this example.

grpc_header_bug_testcase.zip

[BillWSY]

Strangely, these packages built without any issue on my computer. Can you also report your catkin version? Did you use catkin build or catkin_make? Are you running catkin is isolated mode?

[9a3eedi]

That is very strange. I have used catkin_make. No isolated mode or anything. I do not have catkin-tools installed, so I haven't tried using catkin build.

As this seems to be an issue related to my environment, I also put this question in ROS Answers. It can be found here. https://answers.ros.org/question/294331/unable-to-include-headers-found-in-develinclude-generated-by-grpc/ . But I would appreciates any insights in the meantime.

I'm running ROS Kinetic under Ubuntu MATE, with ros-kinetic-catkin 0.7.11-0xenial-20180222-175501-0800 amd64 installed

[9a3eedi]

Another note: I have tried the test case on a completely different machine (a raspberry pi running a fresh install of Ubuntu MATE 16.04 and Kinetic), and I'm facing the same problem.

[BillWSY]

Thanks for the information. I was using catkin-tools. I will test with catkin_make and try to debug.
Meanwhile, is there any chance that you can use catkin-tools to test if the problem persists?

[BillWSY]

I can confirm the bug with catkin_make. I will try to dig into it when I have time.

[BillWSY]

Temporary workaround:
Include the following lines in linked_package/CMakeLists.txt

include_directories(${CATKIN_DEVEL_PREFIX}/${CATKIN_GLOBAL_INCLUDE_DESTINATION})

[9a3eedi]

Workaround works for me. Thanks! Will use this for now.

As for catkin-tools, I'm actually unfamiliar with using them so it'll take me a while to try...

[BillWSY]

It seems ROS's message generation adds the include directory in their CMakeList rules.
https://github.com/ros/gencpp/blob/b41ee3060badd660662e21cd9d4f81971c87a420/cmake/gencpp-extras.cmake.em#L69

Maybe we should also do that in the CMakeLists.txt in grpc package. When a user find that package, it would prepend the global include directory to the lookup list. Or we can ask user to put this directory into catkin_packages