Contribute back to PCL

[VictorLamoine]

The code in ensenso_grabber.cpp and ensenso_grabber.h are merely a copy of the PCL driver, while this is totally compliant with the license it is too bad these modifications are not contributed to PCL and thus "hidden in the dark".

For example, you replace the openDevice signature to use a serial number, this is probably very useful to other people and it would be nice to integrate that into the "official" driver.

Benefits:

• One driver and not multiple copies of it
• Easier mainting of the driver (everything in PCL) and your ROS wrapper (everything in your repository)
• Code review by the PCL community

Caveats:

• You have to wait for your pull requests to be merged on PCL
• It's going to be a litte bit harder to write install instructions (depending on the PCL release cycle)

What do you think?

[VictorLamoine]

Also note that if you want to add Travis CI it is possible because I provide pre-compiled PCL versions (on a personnal server) with Ensenso support; take a look at https://github.com/InstitutMaupertuis/advanced_industrial_ci

[fsuarez6]

We are planning to contribute to PCL but I cannot give a timeline for it.

In our group, we have several users and installing PCL 1.8 from is cumbersome for only getting the ensenso_grabber, that's why we decide to create our customized copy. Moreover, we don't know when PCL 1.8 will be finally released.

Which branch did you check? kinetic-devel or master?
The master branch is a merely copy of the PCL driver but the kinetic-devel has a considerable amount of modifications.

[VictorLamoine]

Ok I agree compiling PCL takes a lot of time; but contributing to PCL means that your modifications will be integrated in the next binaries. In the long term it will be easier because you will just have to apt install pcl to get the Ensenso driver.

I was taking a look at kinetic-devel. I will probably copy some of your modifications into PCL to make sure they get integrated into PCL 1.8.