Common export directory for downloaded models

[aaronchongth]

Feature request

Description

Related to open-rmf/rmf_traffic_editor#386.

• Current split of MAP_NAME and MAP_NAME_ign directories makes install directory of rmf_demos_maps a little cluttered, with duplicated efforts.

• We should have downloaded models as well as any common generated map yaml files be exported to a common MAP_NAME directory.

• Both simulations from rmf_demos_gz and rmf_demos_ign should add this common directory to path for simulation needs.

Implementation considerations

• We should try to minimize the built package size in order for the binaries to be efficient.

• Consider using a common model directory for all maps, to avoid exporting duplicated models throughout. See Common export directory for downloaded models #89 (comment)

[aaronchongth]

@cnboonhan As mentioned during our VC, the issue of duplicated map names are here,

aaron@biryani:~/workspaces/rmf/install/rmf_demos_maps/share/rmf_demos_maps/maps$ ls
airport_terminal      battle_royale      clinic      hotel       hotel_full_ign  office      triple_H
airport_terminal_ign  battle_royale_ign  clinic_ign  hotel_full  hotel_ign       office_ign  triple_H_ign

The only difference seems to be the .world files between airport_terminal/airport_terminal.world and airport_terminal_ign/airport_terminal.world.

It would probably make sense to remove the use of install/rmf_demos_maps/share/rmf_demos_maps/maps/MAP_NAME_ign and consolidate everything into install/rmf_demos_maps/share/rmf_demos_maps/maps/MAP_NAME, with possibly just the world files named differently.

Let me know what you think.

[cnboonhan]

i think thats fine idea 💯

[luca-della-vedova]

Just some background and further thoughts.
The reason behind the original duplication of the meshes was that originally the sdf file for the building level was different since it had tags specific to ignition to deal with textures, this was fixed a long time ago.

I wonder if we can move this implementation further and have a common directory for all the models in all the maps, like a rmf_demos_maps/models folder. The idea is that if we have a lot of maps that use the same mesh we would still be duplicating the same mesh among different maps, for example on my machine:

luca@luxury:~/ws_avcs$ locate /MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/build/rmf_demos_maps/maps/airport_terminal/models/MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/build/rmf_demos_maps/maps/clinic/models/MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/build/rmf_demos_maps/maps/hotel/models/MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/build/rmf_demos_maps/maps/hotel_full/models/MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/install/rmf_demos_maps/share/rmf_demos_maps/maps/airport_terminal/models/MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/install/rmf_demos_maps/share/rmf_demos_maps/maps/clinic/models/MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/install/rmf_demos_maps/share/rmf_demos_maps/maps/hotel/models/MainTable/model.sdf
/home/luca/demos_ws/install/rmf_demos_maps/share/rmf_demos_maps/maps/hotel_full/models/MainTable/model.sdf

This means that we will have four of the same MainTable mesh that will both take a lot of time during build time (we need to download the model four times) plus make the size of the binaries go up quite a lot.
Does this make sense?

[cnboonhan]

yes i would like that too. Since we pull from Fuel, its probably always true there is a one-one correspondence between model name and model mesh ( i believe ). Happy to move with that additional push as well

[aaronchongth]

Yup, that would be the best way to avoid duplicated models across all maps in the whole rmf_demos_maps package. I'll update the description to reflect that.