Long-term support

[Jack O'Quin]

I want to kick off some discussion about an LTS version.

My thinking about this is based on the Ubuntu example. Since ROS is
natively based on Ubuntu, it seems natural to build a ROS LTS plan
around it.

That suggests picking (ROS, Ubuntu) pairs for which with to make a
long-term resource commitment. For now, the obvious choice is (Fuerte,
Precise), since those are the most recent candidates. I recommend
starting with the smallest reasonable scope to simplify putting all
the supporting components into play.

* How long should the LTS version be supported?

Ubuntu recently changed from 3 to 5 years support for the base system.
That implies significant long-term commitment of build and testing
resources beyond Willow Garage's already significant investment. At
one time WG had a policy of supporting all actively-supported Ubuntu
distributions, but that was relaxed slightly in the interests of
providing more build and test machines for the versions people were
actually using.
--
 joq