TL;DR: If you use robot_upstart on your platform in ROS Indigo, please get in touch with me so that we can ensure whatever your usage is doesn't get broken by an upcoming change.

Hi all,

Since August 2013, Clearpath Robotics has provided robot_upstart, a catkin package intended to assist in creating upstart jobs for ROS of the sort that were scripted semi-manually on Fuerte-era TurtleBot. There are debates to be had about the merits of the exact approach taken vs. alternatives (eg. ros-system-daemon) but robot_upstart has served our internal needs and platform customers well.

Unfortunately, the implementation and documentation for the package have always been very poor. I'm in the process of doing a small rewrite of the package (from bash to python) which will be much easier to test and document and will primarily target Jade. However, some of the enhancements made possible by the new implementation would be really nice to have in Indigo too, especially those which affect multi-robot systems and multi-computer robots.

So if you presently depend on robot_upstart, or ship a robot or configuration to users which depends on it, please contact me so that we can ensure a safe release to Indigo.

Thanks,

Mike