Planning second release of OpenEmbedded layer meta-ros (version 0.2.0)

[Lukas Bulwahn]

Dear meta-ros users and developers,

Two years ago, on January 24th 2013, I published the very first commits of meta-ros on github, and announced it on the related mailing lists [1, 2]. Since then, we have collected close to 900 commits from 15 contributors and we reached the state that meta-ros now provides recipes for over 200 ROS packages. To celebrate this second year anniversary appropriately, I would like to prepare a new release of meta-ros (version 0.2.0).

Before releasing version 0.2, I would like to:

- address the issue #291 [3]---I believe Kristof has almost solved the issue, and I'll continue on that state.

- tag the current state with v0.2rc1, v0.2rc2 and so on until the development stabilized (which I expect to happen quite quickly).

- build all recipes of the latest release candidate with the current master of OpenEmbedded-Core and Yocto Project 1.7.1 - Dizzy.

- test at least the core-image-ros-roscore and the chatter program on the various qemu machines.

- update the installation instructions [4] on the ROS wiki.

I hope to achieve this all within the next two weeks or so, as my calendar still has a few free slots to work on meta-ros.

Of course, everyone is welcome to test the release candidates on the hardware board you have available and write which boards they tested. I collect the list of boards and add all those boards to the release notes (with credits for the tester). You can also build all recipes with other Poky releases or OpenEmbedded distributions, e.g., Angstrom, and report your build configuration here.

After releasing version 0.2 for the ROS Hydro distribution, we will need to address which ROS distribution(s) we would like to support in the future. Currently, I keep the recipes' versions in sync with the versions given in the distribution.yaml of ROS Hydro [5]. In a personal branch [6], I have already experimented with an update of all recipes to the Indigo distribution, and I have not encountered any issues so far.

From my side, I would like to only support one ROS distribution to keep the maintenance effort low, and I would prefer to move forward to the Indigo distribution after version 0.2. However, if there is strong support to stay at the Hydro release or to maintain two branches for the two distributions, we could also consider those options. So what's your opinion on this matter?

[1] https://lists.yoctoproject.org/pipermail/yocto/2013-January/011743.html

[2] http://lists.ros.org/lurker/message/20130124.053434.1b596fe7.de.html

[3] https://github.com/bmwcarit/meta-ros/issues/291

[4] http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Installation/OpenEmbedded

[5] https://github.com/ros/rosdistro/blob/master/hydro/distribution.yaml

[6] https://github.com/bulwahn/meta-ros/tree/indigo-devel

Lukas

[Kristof Robot]

Lukas,

On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 9:38 AM, Lukas Bulwahn
<lukas....@oss.bmw-carit.de> wrote:
> Dear meta-ros users and developers,
>
> Two years ago, on January 24th 2013, I published the very first commits of
> meta-ros on github, and announced it on the related mailing lists [1, 2].
> Since then, we have collected close to 900 commits from 15 contributors and
> we reached the state that meta-ros now provides recipes for over 200 ROS
> packages. To celebrate this second year anniversary appropriately, I would
> like to prepare a new release of meta-ros (version 0.2.0).

Excellent idea!

> Before releasing version 0.2, I would like to:
>
> - address the issue #291 [3]---I believe Kristof has almost solved the
> issue, and I'll continue on that state.

I agree that #291 is the most critical issue at the moment - and needs
fixing before releasing 0.2.

> - tag the current state with v0.2rc1, v0.2rc2 and so on until the
> development stabilized (which I expect to happen quite quickly).
>
> - build all recipes of the latest release candidate with the current master
> of OpenEmbedded-Core and Yocto Project 1.7.1 - Dizzy.
>
> - test at least the core-image-ros-roscore and the chatter program on the
> various qemu machines.
>
> - update the installation instructions [4] on the ROS wiki.

In addition, I believe the project would strongly benefit from a
continuous integration environment, and therefore I would very much
like to see progress on #217 as well. However, this should not be
considered blocking for release 0.2.

> I hope to achieve this all within the next two weeks or so, as my calendar
> still has a few free slots to work on meta-ros.
>
> Of course, everyone is welcome to test the release candidates on the
> hardware board you have available and write which boards they tested. I
> collect the list of boards and add all those boards to the release notes
> (with credits for the tester). You can also build all recipes with other
> Poky releases or OpenEmbedded distributions, e.g., Angstrom, and report your
> build configuration here.

I use and will test Cubieboard2 with the OpenEmbedded master and my
own distro "meta-frobo" - https://github.com/KristofRobot/meta-frobo

> After releasing version 0.2 for the ROS Hydro distribution, we will need to
> address which ROS distribution(s) we would like to support in the future.
> Currently, I keep the recipes' versions in sync with the versions given in
> the distribution.yaml of ROS Hydro [5]. In a personal branch [6], I have
> already experimented with an update of all recipes to the Indigo
> distribution, and I have not encountered any issues so far.
>
> From my side, I would like to only support one ROS distribution to keep the
> maintenance effort low, and I would prefer to move forward to the Indigo
> distribution after version 0.2. However, if there is strong support to stay
> at the Hydro release or to maintain two branches for the two distributions,
> we could also consider those options. So what's your opinion on this matter?

I would like to move forward to Indigo as soon as possible. I am fine
with abandoning Hydro after version 0.2.

Thanks!

Kristof

[Tully Foote]

I agree with above. I just wanted to point out that we've been through most of the development cycle for the next generation of the ROS buildfarm. We just did an update of the documentation here: http://wiki.ros.org/buildfarm  It's all based on docker and is designed to allow reproducing individual jobs locally as well as deploying private copies of the buildfarm.
 

> I hope to achieve this all within the next two weeks or so, as my calendar
> still has a few free slots to work on meta-ros.
>
> Of course, everyone is welcome to test the release candidates on the
> hardware board you have available and write which boards they tested. I
> collect the list of boards and add all those boards to the release notes
> (with credits for the tester). You can also build all recipes with other
> Poky releases or OpenEmbedded distributions, e.g., Angstrom, and report your
> build configuration here.

I use and will test Cubieboard2 with the OpenEmbedded master and my
own distro "meta-frobo" - https://github.com/KristofRobot/meta-frobo

> After releasing version 0.2 for the ROS Hydro distribution, we will need to
> address which ROS distribution(s) we would like to support in the future.
> Currently, I keep the recipes' versions in sync with the versions given in
> the distribution.yaml of ROS Hydro [5]. In a personal branch [6], I have
> already experimented with an update of all recipes to the Indigo
> distribution, and I have not encountered any issues so far.
>
> From my side, I would like to only support one ROS distribution to keep the
> maintenance effort low, and I would prefer to move forward to the Indigo
> distribution after version 0.2. However, if there is strong support to stay
> at the Hydro release or to maintain two branches for the two distributions,
> we could also consider those options. So what's your opinion on this matter?

I would like to move forward to Indigo as soon as possible. I am fine
with abandoning Hydro after version 0.2.

I highly recommend focusing on indigo. Being an LTS it will take much less effort going forward. Also Indigo is at almost full parity for released packages and is being much more actively developed already.

Tully

Thanks!

Kristof