catkin

Catkin is a botanical term for a slim, elongated inflorescence of small flowers. Catkins are typically unisexual and lack conspicuous petals; they are often pendulous and arranged in a spike-like cluster. They are common on many trees and shrubs, including willows, poplars, birches, alders, and oaks, where male catkins shed pollen and female catkins develop seeds after pollination. Because many catkins are wind-pollinated, they tend to be flexible and lightweight, facilitating pollen dispersal.

Catkin is also the name of the build system used for the Robot Operating System (ROS). It is a CMake-based meta-build system designed to standardize how ROS packages are built and organized. Catkin replaces the older rosbuild system; packages declare metadata in a package.xml file and provide CMakeLists.txt files to specify build instructions. A typical ROS workspace contains a source directory with packages, a build directory, and a devel directory for development artifacts; common commands include catkin_init_workspace, catkin_make, and catkin_make_isolated. Catkin has an associated set of tools, sometimes referred to as catkin_tools, that provide parallel builds and other conveniences. The catkin approach aims to simplify dependency management and packaging across ROS workspaces.