Unhelpful error message with circular dependency

[DLu]

If you have a circular dependency, catkin_make outputs a decent error message.

CMake Error at /home/dlu/test_workspace/build/catkin_generated/order_packages.cmake:7 (message):
  Circular dependency in subset of packages:

  docbrown, marty

However, catkin build results in this error:

Found '2' packages in 0.0 seconds. 
[build] Runtime: 0.0 seconds 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/catkin", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('catkin-tools==0.3.0', 'console_scripts', 'catkin')()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/commands/catkin.py", line 219, in main
    sys.exit(args.main(args) or 0)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/verbs/catkin_build/cli.py", line 296, in main
    summarize_build=opts.summarize  # Can be True, False, or None
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/verbs/catkin_build/build.py", line 601, in     build_isolated_workspace
    packages_to_be_built = topological_order_packages(dict(packages_to_be_built))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_pkg/topological_order.py", line 138, in topological_order_packages
    if package.name in decorators_by_name:
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'name'

[DLu]

http://gonzo.probablydavid.com/stuff/test_workspace.tar.gz

[wjwwood]

Looks like the error is coming up from https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/catkin_pkg/blob/master/src/catkin_pkg/topological_order.py#L117 which is in catkin_pkg. It might be that we have to check for circular dependencies before passing to that function or there is a regression in that function. Not sure.

I don't have time right now to dig into it, but I can try to have a look sometime next week.

[IanTheEngineer]

Good find, David. Here's a reproduction of the bug, visualized:

[jbohren]

This is fixed in #249.

[DLu]

+1

[kopp]

I get the following error with catkin 0.4.2 (Ubuntu 14.04) with circular dependencies (a depends on b, b depends on a):

[build] Found '2' packages in 0.0 seconds.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/catkin", line 9, in <module>
    load_entry_point('catkin-tools==0.4.2', 'console_scripts', 'catkin')()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/commands/catkin.py", line 258, in main
    catkin_main(sysargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/commands/catkin.py", line 253, in catkin_main
    sys.exit(args.main(args) or 0)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/verbs/catkin_build/cli.py", line 418, in main
    summarize_build=opts.summarize  # Can be True, False, or None
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/verbs/catkin_build/build.py", line 305, in build_isolated_workspace
    packages, context, workspace_packages)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/catkin_tools/verbs/catkin_build/build.py", line 98, in determine_packages_to_be_built
    workspace_package_names = dict([(pkg.name, (path, pkg)) for path, pkg in ordered_packages])
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'name'

This looks slightly different and as far as I understood the bug above is fixed in 0.4.x -- right? So I'm not sure whether this is something new...

[timotheecour]

reopened here since found same issue: #430