RFC on updated REP 111: support wildcard in rosdep rules

General
1

Hello everyone,

A very long time has passed since the rosdep YAML format was specified in REP 111. For every new distribution which ROS supports the rosdep rules have to be checked / updated and every time we notice that some of the work feels redundant and is only necessary due to the limited expressibility of the format.

Therefore we are proposing a small change to address some of the shortcomings which should reduce the effort necessary to maintain these information. Please see the current draft of the updated REP which adds only two sections to the existing REP 111:

  • Wildcard OS_VERSION
  • Allow PACKAGE_ARGUMENT to be explicitly null

For more comments, feedback and opinions please comment on the PR. Please do not reply in this discourse thread since the audience is very big and not everyone might be interested in the discussion of this topic.

There is already a pending PR for the rosdep Python package to implement the proposed enhancements.

Your friendly ROS team