Support Serialize/Deserialize Functions in Type Adaption

[audrow]

Currently, we only support convert functions to go between custom and ROS message types, which are more efficient for intra-process communication. It would be more efficient (less copy operations) for inter process communication to support serialization and deserialization functions.

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I've put this issue on the H-turtle board for consideration.

[asasine]

Would this encompass deserializing a YAML representation of a message to its ROS/custom message type, the opposite of rosidl's to_yaml() function?

[audrow]

I'm not sure. I'm not very familiar with rosidl. Any thoughts, @wjwwood?

[wjwwood]

No, it would not. That's orthogonal to this issue which is supporting (de)serialization of custom types directly to/from the wire format. It doesn't cover other targets like yaml and it doesn't cover that for existing ROS types, only the custom types (which don't have to_yaml() either atm).