On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Brian Gerkey <gerkey@osrfoundation.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Jack O'Quin <jack.oquin@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Brian Gerkey <gerkey@osrfoundation.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> hi Vijay,
>>
>> Thanks for the reply, and don't feel bad.  It didn't cause us that
>> much pain (thanks to Hugo's quick thinking as to the cause).
>>
>> Also, to be honest, I wasn't aware that REP 9 is in effect.  I recall
>> Josh writing it ages ago, but didn't know that we'd adopted it as a
>> policy.  So I wouldn't have thought twice about introducing
>> ABI-breaking changes myself.
>>
>> Of course, REP 9 is a good policy and we should all be following it.
>> It probably hasn't come up much in the past because if you only
>> release your code using the ROS release system, then your debs will
>> all be strictly version-locked and you won't see this problem.  But
>> now, people (like us) are starting to release stuff in other ways
>> while depending on ROS debs.  That's a good thing, and is something
>> that we should work to support.
>
>
> My understanding of REP 9 is that ABI consistency is only required *within*
> an even-cycle release, such as Fuerte or Groovy. Not *between* releases.
>
> Is that what we are talking about here?

Yes: pr2_mechanism had an ABI-breaking change somewhere between 1.6.1
and 1.6.4, all of which were released into Fuerte.

I see.

In that case, I agree that Vijay's project should not be released until the next distro, Groovy in this case. 
--
 joq