[ros-users] OS Usage Survey

[Tully Foote]

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the feedback.

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Thomas Moulard <thomas.moulard at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 12:25 PM, Tully Foote <tfoote at osrfoundation.org>
> wrote:
> > Hi Everyone,
> >
> > To facilitate the release timeline discussion please take a moment to
> fill
> > out this survey about your ROS usage past and expected so we can make an
> > informed decision going forward.
> >
> > https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JY63R3Z
> >
> > We will keep this survey open through the end of the week.
>
> Hi Tully,
> thanks for putting this form altogether.
>
> Just two remarks:
>
> 1. The question 3 is difficult to answer.
>
> In my case (a bit extreme but still :) I use three distributions:
> - Ubuntu *LTS* Lucid on my robot (yes not even the last LTS but we
> have constraints on this...)
> - LTS or last Ubuntu version for the students at the lab (simulation)
> - I also use Debian Sid myself to see problems ahead and so that I can
> package software.
>

Do your best to answer the questions in their strictest form.  The
questions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and are really targeted
at helping decide which versions of Ubuntu to build binary packages for
going forward.


>
>
> 2. The question five is also a bit difficult to understand. I mean I
> guess all ROS enthousiasts
> here would love to see ROS packaged everywhere. And to nitpick a bit,
> binary packages on
> Gentoo and Arch are kind of rare. Shouldn't the "binary" word be
> removed from this question
> (...or your goal was it to really make a differentiation on this?)
>

I've reworded it to just say packages built.


>
> A last note: most of the users here will probably be Ubuntu users.
> Don't take it that we are
> all very happy with Ubuntu. Most of them are but my robotics lab
> practically switch to Ubuntu
> *because* it is so difficult to use ROS with another distribution
> (Fedora in this case).
> So please don't take this as a fair estimation of Ubuntu popularity in
> robotics lab over the world ;-)
>

We understand, that's why we threw in this question.  It's not completely
relevant to the current discussion, and I don't expect to switch our main
packaging efforts in the short term.  But looking out a little bit farther
knowing what platforms are of the higher interest will be most valuable.

In our recent infrastructure upgrades we have done our best to make the
infrastructure extendable to other distros. If you or anyone else is
interested in working on supporting binary packages for Fedora or another
platform send us an email on the ros-sig-buildsystem mailing list.  In
particular bloom has been designed to support plugging in new package
generators.  We can help provide guidance on where to get started. Knowing
what distro is of highest interest to the community might help catalyze
progress in this area.

And beyond packaging we are also working hard to make it easier to compile
from source on any platform.  We've made great strides in that direction
and hope to keep improving.

Tully


> Best,
> --
> Thomas Moulard
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