A catkin wrapper for Google protocol buffers
In your CMakeLists.txt, call the protobuf compiler:
set(PROTO_DEFNS proto/path-to-my-protos/my-proto.proto)
set(BASE_PATH "proto")
PROTOBUF_CATKIN_GENERATE_CPP2(${BASE_PATH} PROTO_SRCS PROTO_HDRS ${PROTO_DEFNS})
...
cs_add_library(${PROJECT_NAME} src/my-source-files.cc
${PROTO_SRCS}
${PROTO_HDRS})where BASE_PATH is the base path to the folder containing all protobuf definitions (in this example, the base path is proto).
This will generate C++ codes for the protos given by PROTO_DEFNS.
The C++ files will be generated under catkin_wsbuild/${PROJECT_NAME}/compiled_proto.
The structure within this folder mirrors the structure of the source definitions (within BASE_PATH).
From the compiled C++ files, the generated headers (*.pb.h) are installed into catkin_ws/devel/include, again keeping the folder structure from within BASE_PATH.
The *.proto definition files are installed into catkin_ws/devel/share/proto so that they can be used by other packages.
The example code above would generate the following files:
catkin_ws/build/${PROJECT_NAME}/compiled_proto/path-to-my-protos/my-proto.pb.cccatkin_ws/build/${PROJECT_NAME}/compiled_proto/path-to-my-protos/my-proto.pb.hcatkin_ws/devel/include/path-to-my-protos/my-proto.pb.hcatkin_ws/devel/share/proto/path-to-my-protos/my-proto.pb.h
The protobuf definitions can then be used with #include <path-to-my-protos/my-proto.pb.h in C++ or with import "path-to-my-protos/my-proto.proto"; in other protobuf definition files.