====== Catkinized version of KnowRob available ======

After a lot of refactoring during the summer, we are proud to announce the beta version of the catkinized KnowRob that has further been updated in many aspects. Some highlights:

  * Fully catkinized (including additional repositories such as knowrob_addons)
  * Converted all Java code from the deprecated 'rosjava_jni' to the newer 'rosjava'
  * A web-based visualization module instead of the slow Java-based mod_vis
  * Removed code that is now available as Ubuntu system package (e.g. the Java-Prolog interface JPL)
  * Tidied up the package structure

With these changes, we adapt the system to the state of the art in the ROS community and base it as much as possible on developed third-party libraries. From my point of view, not everything has become better with the switch to catkin and rosjava, which is based on 'gradle', yet another buildsystem. However, both rosbuild and rosjava_jni are deprecated, so we decided to do the transition even if the newer tools have their shortcomings.

The source code can be found in the [[https://github.com/knowrob/knowrob/tree/indigo-devel|'indigo-devel' branch at GitHub]]. It is feature-complete with respect to the old version and actively in use by the IAI group in Bremen. Despite the name, the code also works in ROS Hydro. The documentation in the wiki is being adapted, but not all pages have already been updated. We have documented the changes made in [[https://github.com/knowrob/knowrob/issues?q=is%3Aissue+milestone%3A1.0+|Github issues]] and have created a [[http://knowrob.org/doc/catkin_migration|migration guide]] to help to adapt existing packages.

We'd be glad if you could try the new version and give us feedback! We will also further test the system and work on updating the documentation.


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