Is it safe now to port nodelets to components?

I am tempted to port some ROS1 nodelets to ROS2 as components, but I am seeing composition is currently implemented as a couple of demo binaries. Should we just wait for the concept to be more mature and get finalized? If I look into ROS2 roadmap, I can see in the Future Work list this line: Provide standard way to create and use components.

I would wait a short time. We are going to be working on roslaunch and the “story” for writing, building, and running (with roslaunch) components in this quarter. With that the CMake and runtime behavior of the components should be better.

The code, however, is unlikely to change much (the way you use the rclcpp), perhaps only what macro you call to register the node component.

So with that in mind, you might start migrating anyways, so long as you’re willing to do some remedial work on the build system logic.

As a preview, you could have a look at my old prototype (not sure if it is currently working with Ardent):

It won’t be exactly like that, but it might give you an idea of how it might be different from the component’s demo we currently have in Ardent.

1 Like

@wjwwood I’m very interested in the work on roslaunch for ROS2. Are there are already design documents on this? I’ve seen the docs on parameters and remapping, but nothing dedicated to roslaunch as such.

Edit I’d also be happy to help draft/edit a design document.

I’d like to know the detailed plans for roslaunch, too.

Nothing yet, I’m going to be working on a design doc first thing. I’d be grateful with help with it. I’ll make sure to make it public as early as possible to let you guys help me with it.

1 Like

Thanks for giving us updates on what is on your plate for ROS2 core features. Can you guys update https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Roadmap so we know what is your focus this and next month at least?

Also this thread: ROS 2 Collaboration Bulletin Board seems to be dead.

@mlotfy we just sorted out some of what we’re working on this coming quarter last Thursday, and I think we still have some outstanding feedback from stakeholders, so that might be why we haven’t updated it yet, but I’m sure we will asap.

/cc @dirk-thomas

Yeah… I was hoping it would take on a life of its own, but I haven’t really had time to encourage it. I will say that it’s not the place to talk about core features, perhaps other than to announce we’re starting working on some particular feature or as a call to arms for help, but we usually also do that with a RFC for a design document.

1 Like

I just updated the roadmap listing the items we are currently working on: https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Roadmap/_compare/c2534789f4a829d259e52e085b3545e2353bfcb0...f85cd1eac79d54b5f9aee6353753ae8207b28ae9

As progress and resources permit we will hopefully be able to add more items over time.

1 Like