Hi Everyone, We're pleased to announce the Hydro Alpha build is now available. It includes over 180 packages already. We expect that number to continue to grow rapidly. You can see the status of Hydro packages on this page: http://www.ros.org/debbuild/hydro.html If you are a maintainer please look at what packages have been released and consider releasing yours as soon as your upstream dependencies have been satisfied. If you are blocked on another package being released please contact the maintainer. And if you cannot reach the maintainer please email ros-release@code.ros.org (join if you aren't a member already). If you are planning to release into Hydro there are new tutorials for the new bloom tool. Bloom Release Tutorials: http://ros.org/wiki/bloom There are three forms of metadata for a package which need to be submitted. - To be build into debian packages the package must be added to the hydro release file. Which will point to the gbp release repo. (This step is part of the bloom release process and is covered by the Bloom tutorials) - To be added to the documentation index the package must be added to the hydro doc file. http://www.ros.org/wiki/Get%20Involved#Documenting_Your_.2A-ros-pkg_Repository_on_ROS.org - To have continuous integration run the package must be added to the hydro-devel.yaml Note: Some of these processes will change soon when we land the updates related to REP 137. When that comes we will email a updated procedure and update the documentation. In the last couple years there have been a lot of ROS packages released however some people can no longer continue to maintain their packages like they used to do. As such we have built into the new rosdistro format a maintainer status field which will become active as soon as we finalize REP 137. In the mean time please review what packages you actively develop or would be interested in contributing to. In the past there have been several of us which have been able to pick up packages which were partially orphaned, however the few of us who have been doing this can not keep doing this in the long term. As such if you rely on a package please consider stepping up as a maintainer going forward if the current maintainer no longer has time and ability to maintain it. As soon as we can land the new infrastructure we will be putting up a maintainer status dashboard to make the status more visible. When this is available, we will start a process for evaluating and transferring maintainer status of packages. -- Your Friendly ROS Release Team Updated packages since the last announcement include: Packages Added: ros-hydro-actionlib : 1.10.0 ros-hydro-audio-capture : 0.2.2 ros-hydro-audio-common : 0.2.2 ros-hydro-audio-common-msgs : 0.2.2 ros-hydro-audio-play : 0.2.2 ros-hydro-rqt-common-plugins : 0.2.14 ros-hydro-rqt-launch : 0.2.14 ros-hydro-sound-play : 0.2.2 ros-hydro-camera1394 : 1.9.1 ros-hydro-libsegwayrmp : 0.2.5 ros-hydro-object-recognition-reconstruction : 0.2.23 ros-hydro-object-recognition-tod : 0.4.15 ros-hydro-object-recognition-transparent-objects : 0.3.15 Packages Removed: Packages Updated: ros-hydro-camera-info-manager-py : 0.2.0 -> 0.2.1 ros-hydro-ecto-opencv : 0.4.23 -> 0.4.24 ros-hydro-object-recognition-core : 0.5.1 -> 0.5.2 ros-hydro-octomap : 1.5.90 -> 1.6.0 ros-hydro-octovis : 1.5.90 -> 1.6.0 ros-hydro-urg-c : 1.0.401 -> 1.0.402 ros-hydro-collada-parser : 1.10.3 -> 1.10.4 ros-hydro-collada-urdf : 1.10.3 -> 1.10.4 ros-hydro-console-bridge : 0.2.1 -> 0.2.2 ros-hydro-joint-state-publisher : 1.10.3 -> 1.10.4 ros-hydro-resource-retriever : 1.10.3 -> 1.10.4 ros-hydro-rosconsole-bridge : 0.3.1 -> 0.3.2 ros-hydro-urdf : 1.10.3 -> 1.10.4 ros-hydro-urdf-parser : 1.10.3 -> 1.10.4