novatel_span_driver vs novatel_gps_driver

[Joshua Whitley]

The novatel_span_driver hasn't been actively maintained for a while. I started doing some cleanup of existing PRs and issues last week and it's getting a bit better. However, Southwest Research Institute just released their C++ novatel_gps_driver as open-source week before last which has the following advantages over the existing novatel_span_driver:

- Doesn't require an IMU to be present

- Is better documented

- Is already actively maintained

- Supports both ASCII- and binary-format messages

- Supports either Ethernet or Serial communication (a much-requested feature on the current driver)

- Supports more messages out-of-the-box than the current driver

- Supports input from a PPS signal through a DIO module to a ROS topic

- Has been tested by my organization and SwRI for over 2 years

There are, obviously, some downsides too:

- Isn't well tested on varied hardware (almost exclusively ProPak 6 with 2 IMUs)

- Not quite as easy to add new message types (though the process for doing so is well-documented)

Is there any action that we want to take related to these two drivers at this time?

Thanks,

Josh