Why am I receiving a "cannot find" error when building ROS nodes?

I have a Simulink model with referenced models, and when I generate ROS code unfortunately the packages do not build on my Linux target when I call "catkin build". The error seems to be related to libraries not found between the nodes:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcontroller

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lplant

collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/harness.dir/build.make:329: /home/user/username/devel/.private/harness/lib/harness/harness] Error 1

make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:222: CMakeFiles/harness.dir/all] Error 2

make: *** [Makefile:144: all] Error 2

"harness" is the main model, and the referenced models are "plant" and "controller".

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

There are two workarounds to this issue. The simplest is to use "catkin_make" instead of "catkin build". If you require use of "catkin build", then follow these steps:

1) In harness (Top-model) "CMakeLists.txt", remove the dependent libraries (plant and controller) from "target_link_libraries", i.e., change 

 

target_link_libraries(  harness 
    controller
    plant
    ${catkin_LIBRARIES}
    ${Boost_LIBRARIES}
    ${CMAKE_DL_LIBS}
)

 to

target_link_libraries(  harness 
    ${catkin_LIBRARIES}
    ${Boost_LIBRARIES}
    ${CMAKE_DL_LIBS}
)

2) In plant (Ref-model) "CMakeLists.txt", add the "LIBRARIES" section in "catkin_package", i.e., change 

catkin_package(
  CATKIN_DEPENDS
  ackermann_msgs
  nav_msgs
  roscpp
  sensor_msgs
  std_msgs
  INCLUDE_DIRS include
)

to

catkin_package(
  LIBRARIES plant
  CATKIN_DEPENDS
  ackermann_msgs
  nav_msgs
  roscpp
  sensor_msgs
  std_msgs
  INCLUDE_DIRS include
)

3) In controller (Ref-model) "CMakeLists.txt", add the "LIBRARIES" section in "catkin_package", i.e., change 

catkin_package(
  CATKIN_DEPENDS
  roscpp
  std_msgs
  INCLUDE_DIRS include
)

to

catkin_package(
  LIBRARIES controller
  CATKIN_DEPENDS
  roscpp
  std_msgs
  INCLUDE_DIRS include
)

 

Executing "catkin build" should work fine after taking these steps.