[ros-users] best practices for ROS package repositories?

[Jack O'Quin]

This looks like a good time to reorganize the code in our
utexas-art-ros-pkg svn repository.

I want it to look more like ros-pkg, with separate trunk/, branches/
and tags/ for each stack, so stacks can be released independently.

We also have experimental ("sandbox") packages used by students for
semester projects. I don't want them showing up in the
http://www.ros.org/browse/list.php package list until they reach some
level of maturity and documentation. That list is getting cluttered
with too many undocumented packages that look like semester projects,
which makes it hard to find packages that are genuinely reusable by
others.

Right now, we avoid this problem by putting only documented packages
into the main repository trunk. The ROS wiki tools pick up only those
packages, and ignore the contents of branches/sandbox.

But, I can't find a clear statement of exactly what the wiki tools
will publish if I reorganize our svn tree. I did look, but maybe not
in the right places. I remember some discussion of this on the list a
while back, but can't recall the particulars. I believe there was a
way to specify which paths to publish.

So, what are the recommended "best practices" for federated package
repositories?
-- 
 joq