URDF to SDF conversion is not working on Windows

[traversaro]

@diegoferigo in #24 wrote:

On Windows, the gz sdf command line we use for the URDF to SDF conversion does not work for some reason, the pytest suite is disabled on this OS. cc @traversaro

Windows error

        if cp.returncode != 0:
            msg = f"Failed to find 'sdf' command part of {executable} installation"
           raise RuntimeError(msg)
           RuntimeError: Failed to find 'sdf' command part of C:\Miniconda3\envs\test\Library\bin\gz.BAT installation

I open this issue to track this problem.

[diegoferigo]

For the records, the windows error occurs when the gazebo dependency is installed with conda with the gz-sim7 package. It seems that the gz sdf ... subcommand is not available, while the plain gz instead is found.

I remember that gazebo has a weird ruby-based approach to extend the gz command with subcommands, maybe on windows this is not yet working on conda.

[traversaro]

Ah, I think this is just gazebosim/gz-tools#71, a relative easy fix.

[traversaro]

Ah, I think this is just gazebosim/gz-tools#71, a relative easy fix.

Actually it is a bit complex to solve upstream as the goal is to support multiple config generators (see gazebosim/gz-plugin#63). However, we use single config generators on conda-forge, so we can easily just fix the problem there.

[traversaro]

I guess this should have been fixed by conda-forge/libsdformat-feedstock#94 (unless somebody install sdformat from source on Windows, but this seems quite a cornercase).

[diegoferigo]

Awesome, thanks @traversaro for addressing the problem. We should now check that things work here by removing the if in the CI workflow.

[diegoferigo]

Upstream should be fixed as well in gazebosim/sdformat#1339. I still haven't tried to enable windows back in CI.

[diegoferigo]

After the upstream fixes and some final work on our side (#34, #35), the URDF to SDF conversion required by rod and performed by sdformat should work fine also on Windows 🚀 Our CI is already testing it by installing the required dependencies from conda-forge.

Closing.