<div dir="ltr">Dear all,<div><br></div><div>After carefully reading everyone's suggestion I will go ahead and file pull requests against the driver to Hunter. However I must point out the following just to clear out why this whole discussion was created in the first place.<br>
<br>In the Maintenance Guide link provided by Tully it says the following about the responsibilities of a maintainer:<br><ol><li><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-size:14px;line-height:20px">Moderating the issue tracker</span><br>
</font></li><li><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-size:14px;line-height:20px">Releasing the package with </span><a href="http://wiki.ros.org/bloom" style="color:rgb(43,127,207);text-decoration:none;border:0px;font-size:14px;line-height:20px">bloom</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-size:14px;line-height:20px"> for the distribution you are a maintainer for</span><br>
</font></li><li><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Monitoring and updating the documentation.</font></li></ol><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Commenting</font> on those responsibilities, it appears that Hunter is not really fulfilling his role. The issue tracker is not moderated. I never really got an answer on my question, he just closed the issue. Also, the package has not been maintained for more than a while. Dependencies are wrong, stating rqt in his package.xml, while the dashboard is using wxwidgets with a manifest.xml (in groovy, which is deprecated). The documentation is not really updated, in other parts it says that gazebo is working while in others it says gazebo integration in the todo list. There is no hydro (or indigo) specific branch and the package names are not compliant to the ROS standards "p2os_urdf" instead of p2os_description, etc. I could go on and fill this list but I see no reason.<br>
<br>In the same link you suggested (which of course I had read before contacting the list) it also says "<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;line-height:1.1">Claiming Maintainership" which I did since I saw all these issues. <br>
<br>In the </span><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;line-height:1.1">Checklist For Package Maintainers:</span><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;line-height:1.1"><br>
</span><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;line-height:1.1">In </span><font color="#333333" face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><span style="line-height:15.88888931274414px"><a href="http://www.ros.org/debbuild/hydro.html">http://www.ros.org/debbuild/hydro.html</a> the status is set to "unknown"</span><br>
<span style="line-height:15.88888931274414px">In <a href="http://jenkins.ros.org/view/Hdoc/">http://jenkins.ros.org/view/Hdoc/</a> there is no mention of a p2os package</span><br><span style="line-height:15.88888931274414px">In <a href="http://jenkins.ros.org/view/Hdev/">http://jenkins.ros.org/view/Hdev/</a> there is also no mention of a p2os package<br>
</span><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">No changes are mentioned in <a href="http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Migration">http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Migration</a> for p2os package.<br>
Running catkin_lint on the packages throws obvious errors<br>No gtests are used and in CMakeLists there is no </font><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:20px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">if(CATKIN_ENABLE_TESTING)</font></span></div>
<div><br><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font color="#333333"><span style="line-height:20px">Lastly, I want to point out the obvious, that I did not start this discussion to cause problems to the community. This issue has been around Pioneer robots in the last 2 generations of ROS, where very few work has been pushed to update the drivers with all the advancements done by ROS team. Hunter helped out a lot by keeping p2os alive, but he has not really contributed since more than a year. My decision to claim maintainership was </span></font><b style="color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:20px">after</b><font color="#333333"><span style="line-height:20px"> talking to the pioneer-sig (which pretty much involves most active pioneer/ros users) and <b>after</b> they encouraged me to do so. <br>
The feedback I received from </span></font></font><a class="" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/104350589418268258055?prsrc=4" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none;font-family:'normal arial',sans-serif;line-height:20px">Reed Hedges</a><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><font color="#333333"><span style="line-height:20px"> and </span></font></font><a class="" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/102734305152302697438?prsrc=4" target="_blank" style="text-decoration:none;font-family:'normal arial',sans-serif;line-height:20px">Dereck Wonnacott</a> (main contributors and maintainers of rosaria) was the main reason I still believe that trying to update an almost dead repository by making pull requests is not going to be helpful (or efficient) to the community.<br>
<br>Regards,<br>Aris</div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 4:50 AM, Tully Foote <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tfoote@osrfoundation.org" target="_blank">tfoote@osrfoundation.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Hi Aris, <div><br></div><div>Please see our guide to maintenance: <a href="http://wiki.ros.org/MaintenanceGuide" target="_blank">http://wiki.ros.org/MaintenanceGuide</a> As Austin pointed out Hunter is fulfilling his role as a package maintainer. </div>
<div><br></div><div>In general, a maintainer in good standing they is the authority on the project and we will only look to find a new maintainer when they choose to step down. And when they step down we will usually look for people already actively involved with the project to take over. <br>
</div><div><div><div><br></div><div><div>I'll echo Austin's suggestion that you open issues and file pull requests against the driver. You do not need to be a maintainer to contribute to any package. </div></div>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<div>
<br></div><div>Tully</div></font></span></div></div></div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Austin Hendrix <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:legotown@aol.com" target="_blank">legotown@aol.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Background: <br>
The existing p2os repository is <a href="https://github.com/allenh1/p2os" target="_blank">https://github.com/allenh1/p2os</a><br>
The issue in question about transferring ownership is
<a href="https://github.com/allenh1/p2os/issues/14" target="_blank">https://github.com/allenh1/p2os/issues/14</a><br>
<br>
<br>
In general, if a ROS package is missing functionality or has bugs,
you should file a bug report, to let the maintainer know that there
is a problem. If you have fixes for a particular bug or additional
features, you should submit them as a pull request.<br>
<br>
<br>
Looking at the issue history for the p2os driver, I see that the
level of support is actually quite good: there are no open bug
reports, no open pull requests, and there has been a new release
fairly quickly after major issues were addressed.<br>
<br>
<br>
Aris: I suggest you fork the github repository, and submit your
fixes as pull requests. If you'd like the maintainer to make a
release of the p2os driver into Hydro or Indigo, open an issue
requesting a release, and see what the response is.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
-Austin<div><div><br>
<br>
<div>On 05/29/2014 07:37 AM, Gert Kanter
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<div>Hi!<br>
<br>
I, for one, am in favor of taking over maintainership. If
Hunter Allen is not motivated (or too busy etc) maintaining
the package (already two ROS releases!), then in the
interest of the community, a willing and active new
maintainer should be able to pick up the slack. This way the
original contributors of the p2os can still be (more
prominently) credited for their previous contributions,
especially if you have originally forked the improved p2os
from the old p2os. I also agree that yet another package
that is a successor of a unmaintained package just adds
confusion for the community (and obscures the actively
maintained package from new ROS users).<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>It would be best if Hunter would approve of this action,
of course.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
Disclaimer: I am working on a robot with the Pioneer mobile
platform with p2os and I am very interested in the mentioned
new developments in your private repository.<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Just my two cents,<br>
</div>
Gert Kanter<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">2014-05-29 16:19 GMT+03:00 Aris
Synodinos <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:asynodin@mech.upatras.gr" target="_blank">asynodin@mech.upatras.gr</a>></span>:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Hi,<br>
<br>
I have just recently sent the following(cited) email about
the maintenance status of p2os, but since I was not a
member of the list, the email has not been made public. I
am therefore forwarding the email again, hoping that you
will not receive it twice. Just yesterday the maintainer
of p2os pushed a new commit to the p2os package, which is
however mostly unmaintained and old (no rqt - no
ros_control - no simulation etc). I have contacted the
ros-sig-pioneer mailing list as you can see in the
previous email and we want to not mix things up for the
community. <br>
<br>
Currently there are two drivers for pioneer robots,
rosaria and p2os. Rosaria is actively maintained by the
members of ros-sig-pioneer and uses libaria to communicate
with the robots. P2os however, which dates back to the
stage driver, has been left without proper ros support for
a long time, with no major upgrade ever since electric.
Hunter Allen used a part of Dereck Wonnacott's work ( <a href="https://github.com/dawonn/ros-p2os-driver" target="_blank">https://github.com/dawonn/ros-p2os-driver</a>
) and ported p2os to groovy, using bloom for releasing
the code with debs.<br>
<br>
The problem is that H. Allen is not updating the driver
(very little support) and due to the fact that he has
released the driver with the p2os package name, no one
else can take ownership/maintainership without causing
unnecessary confusion to the community. The result is very
poor support for p2os, (until yesterday there were no
install targets for p2os, so the deb packages were empty)
and outdated support (groovy). I have tried contacting H.
Allen about stepping up to the job, but he closed the
issue without responding.<br>
<br>
What is the proper way to proceed? Is it preferable to
release a new package under a different name? I will
upload my code publicly on github as soon as this is
resolved, under the same (p2os) or a different name if
that is requested. Currently, my code is in a private
bitbucket repository.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Aris<br>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 10:30
AM, Aris Synodinos <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:asynodin@mech.upatras.gr" target="_blank">asynodin@mech.upatras.gr</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">After contacting the ros-sig-pioneer
mailing list, and since the previous maintainer is
unfortunately not responding and has stopped
maintaining the p2os package, I am willing to step
up and claim maintainership of the package. <br>
<br>
I have fixed the issues that exist for groovy (no
install directives in cmake making the debian
package unusable), added features in hydro (moveit
integration, rqt_dashboard etc) and am willing to
continue maintaining it for future versions
(indigo etc).<br>
<br>
Please inform me how to proceed for this to
happen. Currently I have published all my work in
a private repo in bitbucket so as not to cause
confusion to the community, but of course I will
publish this in github when this is desirable.<br>
<br>
Here is the issue I created for the maintainership
status in github:<br>
<a href="https://github.com/allenh1/p2os/issues/14" target="_blank">https://github.com/allenh1/p2os/issues/14</a><br>
<br>
Here is the mail in the ros-sig-pioneer mailing
list:<br>
<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#%21topic/ros-sig-pioneer/GVe3IQUn7cU" target="_blank">https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/ros-sig-pioneer/GVe3IQUn7cU</a><span><font color="#888888"><span><font color="#888888"><br>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-- <br>
<div dir="ltr">Aris Synodinos<br>
PhD Student<br>
Robotics Group<a href="https://github.com/dawonn/ros-p2os-driver" target="_blank">https://github.com/dawonn/ros-p2os-driver</a><br>
Mechanical and Aeronautics Engineering
Department<br>
Tel. <a href="tel:%2B30-2610-996248" value="+302610996248" target="_blank">+30-2610-996248</a><br>
e-mail: <a href="mailto:asynodin@mech.upatras.gr" target="_blank">asynodin@mech.upatras.gr</a><br>
Web: <a href="http://robotics.mech.upatras.gr/" target="_blank">http://robotics.mech.upatras.gr/</a></div>
</div>
</font></span></font></span></div>
<span><font color="#888888">
</font></span></blockquote>
</div>
<span><font color="#888888"><br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div dir="ltr">Aris Synodinos<br>
PhD Student<br>
Robotics Group<br>
Mechanical and Aeronautics Engineering Department<br>
Tel. <a href="tel:%2B30-2610-996248" value="+302610996248" target="_blank">+30-2610-996248</a><br>
e-mail: <a href="mailto:asynodin@mech.upatras.gr" target="_blank">asynodin@mech.upatras.gr</a><br>
Web: <a href="http://robotics.mech.upatras.gr/" target="_blank">http://robotics.mech.upatras.gr/</a></div>
</font></span></div>
</div>
<br>
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<fieldset></fieldset>
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<br></blockquote></div><br></div>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr">Aris Synodinos<br>PhD Student<br>Robotics Group<br>Mechanical and Aeronautics Engineering Department<br>Tel. +30-2610-996248<br>e-mail: <a href="mailto:asynodin@mech.upatras.gr" target="_blank">asynodin@mech.upatras.gr</a><br>
Web: <a href="http://robotics.mech.upatras.gr/" target="_blank">http://robotics.mech.upatras.gr/</a></div>
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