Core, base and desktop releases

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@kristoferB

The core, base and desktop are easy to use in docker and when installing in ubuntu, but not when installing or building on for example mac. It would be great if it was easy to build from each variant. But maybe the solution is to include the rosinstall_generator in the documentation
Building ROS 2 on macOS — ROS 2 Documentation: Rolling documentation?

We’ve been working towards this. I put in a proposal to make the change formally here: Switch from ros2.repos to rosinstall_generator for source installation instructions · Issue #1470 · ros2/ros2_documentation · GitHub

@kristoferB

Just one more questions: one thing that I cannot find is what rmw-implementations that are included in each variant. I started looking into this when fastdds was not included in my rolling-base docker image. I know that cyclone will be the default but i thought that fastdds still would be bundled. We are using the discovery server. Where in the variant-files are the rmw implementations included if I would like to make my own variants?

rmw implementations are just regular packages in general. You just need to install the other rmw implementation’s packages before you build. We only include the default one by default becaue that saves, build time, space, and avoids confusion for the simple cases.

@nuclearsandwich preciently opened a PR with more information on variants which will answer most of your questions about making your own.

Add a guide for using and creating variant packages.