[ros-users] dependency problems with current unstable

[Jack O'Quin]

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Ken Conley <kwc at willowgarage.com> wrote:
> Background: unstable is currently broken, though that was part of the
> intention.  We tried to keep unstable 'stable' all of last cycle,
> which led to landing a lot of changes far too late.  Based on feedback
> that unstable was not heavily used, we're instead 'breaking early,
> breaking often' in order to build Fuerte from the bottom up, rather
> than retrofit it in-place (how Electric was done).

I fully support the "break early and often" approach, I am just trying
to discover how best to proceed.

> Geometry 1.7 should hopefully come out this week. It was stalled by
> issues found in our Oneiric update -- how to integrate with Eigen,
> being one of those issues.
>
> As for the value in releasing in unstable right now, it depends on
> what your goal is.  Getting the release in now means that when things
> are uncorked, they will be taken up immediately.  It also lets you use
> the release tools to checkpoint your progress.  But any releases right
> now will be w/o the benefit of prerelease checks if you depend on a
> currently broken stack.

In my judgement, the camera driver changes can wait until their
natural point in the PERT graph. There is no reason to force that
change before its time. I just want it ready when that time arrives.

My main reason for asking was a suspicion that unnecessary pre-release
and build jobs in the Hudson queues might slow down resolution of the
blocking problems. That would be counter-productive.

> Vincent recommended last week setting up a stack maintainers mailing
> list, which sounds like a good idea to me, and may in the future
> answer your question of "How do I tell when it's time to try again?"

+1

Most ros-users subscribers don't need to worry about these issues.
-- 
 joq