[ros-users] [Discourse.ros.org] [General] ROS 2 Ardent Apalone released

[Dirk Thomas]

We're happy to announce the ROS 2 release `Ardent Apalone`!

Installation instructions and tutorials can be found on the [ROS 2 wiki](https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki).

To get an idea of what's in this release, be sure to read the [Ardent page](https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Ardent-Overview).

A few features and improvements we would like to highlight in this release:
* The first non-beta release.
* `rviz` including a few plugins (the Windows version will follow in a few weeks)
* Different initialization options for message data structures in C++
* Logging API improvements, now also used in the demos
* Time support in C++ with different clocks
* wait-for-service support in the Python client library
* Draft implementation of [REP 149](http://www.ros.org/reps/rep-0149.html) specifying format 3 of the package manifest files

While there is always more work to be done we consider several of the core components to be ready to be used by a broader audience. Therefore we have dropped the "beta" label and will support Ardent for one year, fixing bugs and keeping the release working, especially on platforms with rolling dependency releases (OS X / Windows). We'll start a regular six month release cycle for newer versions of ROS 2. While we do aim to keep the API as stable as possible, we can't guarantee 100% API compatibility between releases. That being said, whether or not ROS 2 is ready to be used for your application or if you can switch from ROS 1 to ROS 2 right now depends on the exact feature set and requirements of your use case. Please check the [features page](https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Features) as well as the [roadmap](https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Roadmap) for more information.

As always, we invite you to try out the new software, give feedback, report bugs, and suggest features (and contribute code!): https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Contact

Your friendly neighborhood ROS 2 Team





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