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    I just wanted to add a +1 to both Tully and all the folks at OSRF
    for polling the community on this issue and working to find a
    well-balanced solution.  It just confirms my belief that ROS is here
    to stay and will continue to take over the world. :-)<br>
    <br>
    --patrick<br>
    <br>
    <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pirobot.org">http://www.pirobot.org</a><br>
    <br>
    <br>
    <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05/30/2013 04:46 PM, Tully Foote
      wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote
cite="mid:CAM7qi7Uf0o1Rk-=J8BQBqhK6i8WYqjAJd19VEXEpNvgAZFfdug@mail.gmail.com"
      type="cite">
      <div dir="ltr"><b style="font-weight:normal"
          id="docs-internal-guid-5dfe16c8-f7d4-53ae-c429-37a65c2111a7">
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Hi
              Everyone, </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">As
              a follow up to the survey we circulated last month I'd
              like to start a discussion of what the best timeline for
              ROS releases would be.  </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">As
              a reminder of the survey results see: <a
                moz-do-not-send="true"
                href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzNmzxy4pVGMZHd2b1BSWVlHVHM/edit">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzNmzxy4pVGMZHd2b1BSWVlHVHM/edit</a></span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We've
              had many discussions here at OSRF about these results and
              have come up with a few candidates which seem reasonable.
               I'll outline the logic behind how we got to them and
              would like to hear what you think.</span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Starting
              out based on the survey.  We had a majority of respondants
              prefering a 12 month release cycle and a plurality of
              respondants preferring a 24 month support period.  These
              two number nicely allign with our current practice of
              having two supported ROS distributions at a time with one
              ROS distribution in development, however just with a
              longer release cycle.  This amount of parallel development
              is about all that we think we can support as a community.
               So based on this I think there's a relatively clear
              mandate to change the ROS release cycle to every 12 months
              with 24 months of support, allowing 12 months of overlap
              between releases for transition.  </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We've
              put together a nice graphic see ros.svg</span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Unfortunately
              the problem is not quite as simple as the above graphic
              shows as we need to build on top of other platforms.
               Ubuntu has recently updated their planned release cycle
              to support LTS for 5 years, but non-LTS releases for only
              9 months while maintaining their 6 month release cycle.
               See: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
                href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases</a>
               </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">This
              can be seen in ubuntu.svg</span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">This
              change for Ubuntu unfortunately makes our nice clean plan
              above much harder as it is impossible to support a release
              for anywhere near close to 24 months on non-LTS Ubuntu
              distros.  </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We
              started out be assuming we'd release ROS in the spring to
              coincide with the LTS Ubuntu Release.  If we're planning a
              1 year release cycle, the quick answer is that for the
              intervening 6 month Ubuntu Release the last ROS release is
              ported forward.  This can be done with a minimal effort by
              following the Ubuntu by about 1 month, enabling a ROS
              release to be built against the current release and the
              upcoming pre-release Ubuntu. (Based on past experiences
              prebuilds of Ubuntu releases are available shortly after
              the previous release has come out.) With this basic
              outline we can release ROS each spring and support two
              Ubuntu distros each.  </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In
              recognition of the fact that many users only use LTS on
              their robots we then thought to add a backport of the ROS
              release with LTS+2 to build on the LTS.  However the fact
              that the LTS+2 release will also be built on the LTS+3
              makes supporting this spanning set very hard because LTS+3
              is usually the staging grounds for large changes to get
              into the next LTS release.  </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">To
              see this see graphic ubuntu_ros.svg</span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">To
              resolve this there are many options.  We could consider
              dropping support for LTS+3 to resolve the large spanning
              set.  Another option is to simply support the LTS Ubuntu
              Releases since the non LTS release cycles are now so
              short, making our 24 month support cycle much easier.  </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">You
              will note in this process that we have decreased the
              matrix of ROS vs Ubuntu packages.  This is purposeful as
              we've identified supporting the large matrix of ROS vs
              Ubuntu distros as a significant burden on the community.
               Our sketch is laid out to support two major use cases, a
              stable developer who wants to stick to the LTS Ubuntu
              release and the cutting edge user who wants the latest
              version of ROS on the latest Ubuntu distro.  </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Besides
              the provided Debian package it is always easily possible
              to build a ROS distribution from source. It only requires
              running a handful of commands.  A complete build of
              desktop-full takes about 3-4 hours of compilation time on
              a recent Intel i7 machine. This is the workflow that every
              non-Ubuntu user uses which has been continuously improved
              as we have upgraded the core tools.</span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">And
              the last consideration is when should we release Hydro, we
              have close to half the packages for Hydro released and I
              know many of the remaining packages which were in the
              initial groovy release are preparing for the hydro release
              at the moment.  From the considerations of synchronizing
              with Ubuntu LTS it seems like a good target for Indigo
              Igloo will be April/May 2014 leaving us 11 months from
              now.  As a straw man for Hydro I'd propose July giving the
              Indigo cycle 9 months following Hydro 7 months to ease us
              into the 12 month cycle. </span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Please
              let us know your thoughts?</span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span>
          <p dir="ltr"
            style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
            <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Tully</span></p>
          <br>
          <span
style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span></b></div>
      <br>
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      <br>
      <pre wrap="">_______________________________________________
ros-users mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ros-users@code.ros.org">ros-users@code.ros.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users">https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users</a>
</pre>
    </blockquote>
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