Dear meta-ros developers and early adopters,
in the last few weeks and months, we have made some really great progress in this project. Currently, we provide all ros_comm packages and some more packages, such as common_msgs, geometry (with the tf package) and nodelet_core. I am trying hard to get perception_pcl (with the pcl_ros package) compiling and running as well. Furthermore, we can cross-compile to ARM architectures. We support working with the Angstrom distribution, we can cross-compile to the Beagleboard and Victor will soon integrate more there as well. ROS Hydro is currently in its beta phase and Tully Foote has announced that Hydro is planned to be released at the end of July. I see a good chance for us to announce our first release of meta-ros just in time for the Hydro release and providing a meta-ros release that is in line with the versions of the ROS Hydro release. At the moment, I see the following tasks that must be done: A. resolve the major issues (marked with :prio-high in the github issue tracker) B. synchronize the versions of all the packages in meta-ros with the hydro release C. provide some documentation on the ROS wiki D. test building and running the packages In more detail, I think these are the topics we have to address for our first release: A. Resolve the major issues 1. https://github.com/bmwcarit/meta-ros/issues/68 This is almost solved now and I am expecting that Victor can commit the patch for apr in OpenEmbedded-Core repository soon. 2. https://github.com/bmwcarit/meta-ros/issues/106 The find_package command picks up libraries from the host system. This can lead to surprising behavior depending on what is installed on the host. We have not looked much into this issue yet, but if we want to reach out to more users, this issue must be resolved. B. Synchronize versions The hydro-release defines the versions of its packages in https://github.com/ros/rosdistro/blob/master/hydro/release.yaml. All we have to do is to adjust our versions to the versions in the Hydro release. I believe cross-compiling the packages should still work with the current Hydro versions. Possibly, it is best to have a simple python script that compares the meta-ros versions to the release.yaml to simplify staying up to date with the changes to Hydro during the beta phase and later on. C. Provide some documentation on the ROS wiki We write a document providing a simple guide how to use meta-ros. Probably, it is best to start what we have in the README file, move it to the meta-ros wiki and collaboratively extend it there. D. test building and running the packages We should try to test meta-ros on different machines and with different bitbake configurations. Also, it would be best to make the tests reproducible, e.g., with simple bash scripts or OpenEmbedded-Core's ptest environment (for tests on the target). What do you think? Lukas
