Preparing for Noetic Sync 2021-03-12

Packaging and Release Management Noetic
1

Hello Noetic maintainers!

Starting now, I will be holding new Noetic ros/rosdistro release PRs with a plan to sync ROS Noetic packages to the main apt repo on 2021/03/12. Please comment here if there are any issues I should know about before performing the sync.

There is one known regression on all platforms:

There are currently 151 packages waiting to sync.

2

The sync is out :tada:

Now is a great time to make releases for the next sync :four_leaf_clover:

3

Hi @sloretz, I don’t understand these “syncs”, but why are there still a number of Noetic packages that didn’t get updated?
Pull requests · ros/rosdistro · GitHub (bottom of page 1)

I’m just curious what is holding them back now that the sync is done. Thanks!

4

The syncs are how we get updated packages out to end users. The pipeline is essentially:

  • Package maintainers make source changes to their repository.
  • Once they have enough fixes/features, they do a source release.
  • After a source release, they do a bloom-release to release the package into the distribution (this opens up the rosdistro PRs you are pointing to above).
  • After review, the ROS team merges those PRs into GitHub - ros/rosdistro: This repo maintains a lists of repositories for each ROS distribution.
  • The buildfarm (https://build.ros.org) notices this, and rebuilds the package (and any packages that depend on this package).
  • Assuming the packages built properly, they are now available at http://packages.ros.org/ros-testing/ubuntu/ for testing. But this is not the same as general availability.
  • Periodically, the ROS team will put a particular ROS distribution into a “sync freeze”, so that changes stop happening to that distribution.
  • After a testing period, the “sync” will be performed from the testing to the main repository. The packages are now available to end-users.

In this case, @sloretz just did the final bullet item. Once that is done, rosdistro is open to that distribution again. However, those PRs still have to be reviewed and merged, and we haven’t had time for it. In other words, you need to be a bit patient :).

2 Likes
5

Thanks for the detailed explanation! So the “held for sync” tag simply meant “review this PR after the latest sync is done” and not “include this PR in the latest sync”.
Makes sense! thanks again.

6

Would it be time for a new sync?

It’s been a month.

(and some other characters as Discourse is being difficult)

7

It will be time for a sync after a catkin release fixes a bunch of regressions involving a gtest library being installed when it shouldn’t have. That release is in progress : 0.8.10 · ros/catkin@e40320e · GitHub

1 Like
8

A sync would be great, though I expect to get a few more fixes in this weekend too, if next week is a good time for the sync freeze to start. (figured I’d chime in)