Drake installation procedure

[hongkai-dai]

I followed the source installation page (http://drake.mit.edu/from_source.html) to install drake on my Ubuntu 14.04 machine, I notice some guidelines might not be exactly correct.

• Before setting my own fork of drake as the origin remote, I need to remove the origin first. This is what I did

  git clone [email protected]:RobotLocomotion/drake.git drake-distro
  cd drake-distro
  git remote add upstream [email protected]:RobotLocomotion/drake.git
  git remote remove origin
  git remote add origin [email protected]:[your github user name]/drake.git
  git remote set-url --push upstream no_push
  

  Otherwise it will throw the error

  fatal: remote origin already exists.
  

  if I call git remote add origin [email protected]:[your github user name]/drake.git directly.

• Where should I call make command? Following http://drake.mit.edu/from_source.html#build-with-make, I create a folder build inside drake-distro, and run make within that build folder. Then all the objects live within the build folder. But in http://drake.mit.edu/from_source.html#stay-up-to-date, we should run make command in drake-distro folder, this will create directories build, pod-build, drake/pod-build inside drake-distro folder. Which one is correct?

• Should we still call addpath_pods when launching MATLAB? In http://drake.mit.edu/from_source.html#test-your-installation, it says we only need to call addpath_drake.

I also had several problems to call MATLAB functions if I run make within the drake-distro/build folder.

• If I call drake-distro/drake/addpath_drake, I then get the error

  Adding /home/hongkai/drake-distro/build/matlab to the matlab path
  Error using addpath_drake (line 24)
  You must run make first (and/or add your pod
  build/matlab directory to the matlab path)
  

  I have to add drake-distro/build/install/matlab to my matlab path, so that I can call addpath_drake.

• Another problem is that when I call getCMakeParam in MATLAB, it looks into the cache file in drake-distro/drake/pod-build/CMakeCache.txt, which does not exist if I call make in drake-distro/build folder. But this file exists if I call make in drake-distro folder.

[liangfok]

Oops. Thanks for catching these errors. I'll submit a PR to fix the problems soon. Here are some quick responses:

Before setting my own fork of drake as the origin remote, I need to remove the origin first.

You don't necessarily have to remove origin, just set its URL:

git remote set-url origin [email protected]:[your github user name]/drake.git

Where should I call make command?

Since we're going to remove drake-distro/Makefile (see: #2758), the former is correct. We should run make from within drake-distro/build.

Should we still call addpath_pods when launching MATLAB?

No since we're moving away from PODs.

I also had several problems to call MATLAB functions if I run make within the drake-distro/build folder.

Yes, I believe we need to update addpath_drake. There's an open PR for that here: #2599. It needs to be updated to support the fact that our current official way of build drake is within drake-distro/build/.