Console Plugin System

Installation

To get maplab into a state with all core plugins (VIMap file system integration, BA, LC, etc.), run

catkin build maplab

The package maplab is a metapackage containing the maplab console and all non-experimental plugins to ease the installation of a functioning console. You can type help in the console to get a list of all installed plugins.

If a plugin doesn't show up in a console, you may need to recompile it with rerunning cmake (as this will create the entry in the plugin file list):

catkin build --no-deps --force-cmake <missing_plugin_name>

How it works

Each plugin adds an entry with the path to the library *.so to $CATKIN_WS/devel/share/console-plugins.txt ("plugin list") during compilation. This list is then opened by the maplab console application. The application tries to dynamically load the library referred in the console-plugins.txt file.

Uninstalling a plugin

Delete the library .so: Delete the file under $CATKIN_WS/devel/lib/lib<PACKAGE_NAME>.so. Maplab will still try to load the library, but detect that the file is missing and delete the entry from the list.

Note: to readd the plugin to the console, it's not sufficient to only recompile the package. You also need to make sure that cmake is rerun by running catkin with the --force-cmake argument.

Adding a new plugin

See [[Coding-Examples:-Creating-a-custom-console-plugin]]