During the Indigo release cycle we have rolled out REP 141 for specifying the ROS distribution files.

We are currently in the process of developing a ROS buildfarm which can easily be used to run a custom (optionally private) buildfarm [1][2] as well as make jobs reproducible locally.

After having deployed separate test buildfarms we are convinced that bundling the ROS distriubtion files as well as the buildfarm configuration is not flexible enough.

Therefore we separated the buildfarm configuration [3] from the rosdistro repository (and enhanced it with several new options).

The REP 143 describes the changes being made to the ROS distribution files:

- remove all build files from the REP, they are now being handled externally, no existing client except the buildfarm uses these information anyway

- allow multiple distribution files for a single ROS distro (to make extending it easier)

- introduced more flags to control for which source repositories CI jobs should be generated

Please find the latest draft of the document at:

We have already updated the reference implementation on a branch (https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rosdistro/pull/45) and verified that the existing tools still work with it.

If you are interested in this REP please have a close look and vote or comment on the pull request:

Thank you,

- Dirk

[1] https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/buildfarm_deployment

[2] https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/ros_buildfarm

[3] https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/ros_buildfarm_config