Unable to cd to deb installs sourced in /opt/ros/<distro>/ when workspace is sourced

[RMichaelSwan]

If you source your workspace setup.bash this will prevent the ability to cd to /opt/ros/<distro>/share/<package>.

In ROS1 you could roscd to installed ros packages which was useful if you ever wanted more insight on the options for a specific package. ros2 launch <package> is able to tab complete to these /opt/ros/<distro>/share/<package> directories to find launch files so clearly the functionality already exists, it just needs to be ported in some form here.

[Briancbn]

Hi @RMichaelSwan, thanks for the suggestion.

There is a previous attempt ros2/ros2cli#75 on ros2cd.

Please correct if I am wrong, /opt/ros/<distro>/share/<package> can only be resolved through AMENT_PREFIX_PATH.

I don't think any of the colcon extensions even load in the AMENT_PREFIX_PATH or uses ros2cli commands to discover the ROS2 packages at the current point, rather it is more common in ros2cli.

Anw I am not a maintainer for colcon, what do you think @cottsay?

[cottsay]

There is colcon-installed-package-information, which would be able to determine what packages are installed under AMENT_PREFIX_PATH and which specific prefix they fall under (i.e. /opt/ros/<distro>). You could possibly use that information to add support for this feature to colcon-cd.