I've just gotten myself a Rover devkit board.

Seems like a decent bit of kit - but the pins are all clustered together.
The order is also somewhat different. I've got a circuit board that was designed for a "standard" ESP 32 board. I considered making a board to sit inbetween - but the layout of the pins is hugely different.
Anyone know why this is ?
Or better still know of a good solution to this.
(Other than using the standard board and wiring the debugger to that :) )

(I realise there are a load of variations of these things but still..)

Thanks for the report.

It seems the pinout is different due to all of the onboard peripherals (Debugger, screen, SD etc) so the pins have been grouped differently for development of e.g. camera systems (like ESP32-CAM) as well as jumper connections on the debugger pins for flexibility.  This is often the case with the full development kit boards as they allow access to all features of the chip in a more systematic way.

The only solutions to wire it to a "normal" ESP32 project (even these pinouts vary depending on exact model) would be either the converter board you suggest, or using jumper wires really.

As you say you can use the WROVER debugger to link to an external ESP32 module (below), however this is essentially the same as just having an ESP-PROG and a normal ESP32.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zSEqtlQWvU

OK thanks.