[ros-users] Hydro Fork Announcement

[Tully Foote]

Hi Everyone,
This email is to give an update on the ROS Hydro development.
In preparation for Hydro there has been lots of activity preparing the
infrastructure for the new release [1].  There also has been significant
patch releases for Groovy happening  [4].  Two major requirements for the
Hydro fork were the upgrades to bloom and the development of a REP for
3rdparty package releases which are being finished up [5] [6].
= Updated Hydro Schedule =
As we are now ready to fork the rosdisto for Hydro development we need to
review the Hydro development cycle.  We will not be able to catch up to the
standard release cycle.
New Schedule Goals:
- March 5th: Hydro Fork- April   2nd: Hydro AlphaThe first version of all
packages are released into Hydro. - April  25th: Hydro BetaAll major
changes have been completed for stable packages.  - May  22nd: Hydro Medusa
Release

This means that in the next 4 weeks we hope that all released packages can
be released into Hydro to form the Alpha Release on April 2nd.  There will
be 3 more weeks for upgrades before the Beta release on April 25th.
If you are a maintainer please watch for when it will be appropriate to
make your first release into Hydro.
= Ongoing REPs =
Already there has been quite a bit of activity developing REPs for the
Hydro cycle with discussions ongoing for REPs in ros-users,
ros-sig-drivers, and ros-sig-buildsystem and the pull requests in the rep
repository [3].   I encourage everyone to watch for REP discussions and
consider joining them.
The REPs under review can be found at these locations: - 132 Incorporation
of Changelogs into Package Source Tree
https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/blob/master/rep-0132.rst- 133
Separation of build environment and source tree tools
https://github.com/tkruse/rep/tree/repwstool - 134 catkin_make_isolated for
non-standard catkin packages
https://github.com/tkruse/rep/blob/repisolated/rep-0134.rst- 135 Driver
Namespace Practices
https://github.com/chadrockey/rep/blob/namespace/rep-0135.rst- 136
Releasing Third Party, Non catkin Packages
https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/blob/release_third_party/rep-0136.rst-137
ROS distribution files
https://github.com/po1/rep/blob/rep137/rep-0137.rst- 138 LaserScan Common
Topics, Parameters, and Diagnostic Keys
https://github.com/chadrockey/rep/blob/laserscanner/rep-0138.rst They all
have pull requests pointing to their discussions at [3].
= Outstanding Issues =
One major change in Ubuntu which will effect Hydro is that In Raring
Ringtail (13.04) Ubuntu will switch to use Python 3 by default.  This will
require a large audit of the Python codebase to test for compatibility
 There's an issue open to keep track of this at the rosdistro level [7].
 We plan to follow Ubuntu's recommendation which is to make scripts Python
2.7+ and Python 3.3+ compatible.  For more information on what is required
see the Ubuntu Python 3 wiki page [8].

= Maintainer Status =
One of the initiatives we plan for Hydro is to keep more up to date
maintainer information for packages.  This is covered in draft REP 137 [2].
  There are a large number of released packages which over time the
original authors have moved to new situations where they do not have the
ability to maintain their packages.   Historically many of these packages
were picked up and carried forward by a few individuals.  However this
approach is not sustainable.
To keep the quality of ROS packages as high as possible we will be looking
for new maintainers to distribute the burden throughout the community. We
will ask that all packages released into Hydro have clear maintenance
status.  One of the great strengths of the ROS community is the breadth and
number of members in the community.  With small contributions for many of
the members the burden can be easily carried.  Please keep this in mind and
consider stepping up to maintain a package which is flagged as needing a
maintainer in the future.  There will be more communications about this
going forward.
= Electric Buildfarm =
As we bring up the buildfarm to support Hydro we will be retiring the
electric jobs on the farm.  We cannot maintain the infrastructure for more
than 3 rosdistros simultaneously.  This will keep 2 active rosdistros
(Fuerte and Groovy)  and one in development(Hydro).  The downloads will
continue to be available.
Tully

[1]
https://github.com/ros/rosdistro/issues?milestone=5&page=1&state=closed[2]
https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/pull/27[3]
https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep[4]
https://code.ros.org/lurker/attach/3@20130304.103724.ea382def.attach[5]
http://www.ros.org/news/2013/02/bloom-version-030.html[6]
https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/pull/23[7]
https://github.com/ros/rosdistro/issues/506[8]
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Python/3
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