Align message definitions to ROS equivalents

[azeey]

It's very common to use Gazebo with ROS and currently, this is done using the ros_gz_bridge which is a ROS node that converts gz-transport messages to ROS messages and vice-versa. To optimize this use case, it would be beneficial to align ROS and Gazebo message definitions so that the conversions are trivial, and more conducive for automating the creation of message converters.

[andreas-loeffler]

hey @Azzey, any updates on this? I assume after abt 2y without any progress this issue is not being worked on rn (@caguero )? If thats the case, I'd be interested in working on it!

But I'd have a few questions, since modifying the messages here will break the current dependencies in the ros_gz_bridge repo/pkg, what is the preferred workflow? Should I plan to open a synced issue and then following a PR in the ros_gz repository at the same time so we dont break the bridge?

[azeey]

Hi @andreas-loeffler. This is part of a very large task the team has put on hold for a while because we haven't had time to iron out how this message definition alignment would be used in ros_gz_bridge. We still don't have the bandwidth for it so I don't encourage anyone to work on this at the moment. If you are interested in contributing I highly recommend looking at our secondary roadmap and picking something of interest to you. Otherwise, you can also look at open issues labeled "good first issue" (handy link). Issues labeled "help wanted" are also up for grabs (handy link), but they will require more experience with the code base.