Expose message generation framework

[osrf-migration]

Original report (archived issue) by Anonymous.

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Summary

I'm trying to add custom messages to my ignition project. Since ign-msgs doesn't seem to expose this functionality, I had to copy the cmake macro ign_msgs_protoc from ign-msgs/src/CMakeLists.txt into my own project, along with the generator source files: ign-msgs/src/Generator.cc, ign-msgs/src/Generator.hh, ign-msgs/src/generator_main.cc. Although this works, it's not a clean solution. Are there any plans to export the message generation framework so it can be used by other projects?

[osrf-migration]

Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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Could you elaborate on your use case? Ignition Transport is able to publish any Protobuf messages, not only Ignition Messages. See the example here where a custom string message is created and published with publisher_custom_msg. Does that cover your use case?

Are there any plans to export the message generation framework so it can be used by other projects?

I don't think there is. But if there's a valid use case we could consider.

[mjcarroll]

This was completed in #339, tutorial added in: #386