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 :).