ROS Quality Assurance Working Group November 2018 Meeting Notes

Agenda:

  1. Update on the QA Dashboard (Making ROS Quality Visible)
  2. Actions from last meeting
  3. Start off the discussion on the “Maintenance Issue” initiative. Will brainstorm solutions for the issue.
  • Quality Dashboard:
    • Matt Droter did not had time to finish the work on the Quality Dashboard.
    • I conveyed to the group the result of my research on quality metrics rating. I searched for a visual rating of software quality, i.e. how to rate software quality using a star rating method? There is no specific literature that provides a formula to derive such rating.
      • We decided as a group to descope the stars rating of packages for the time being. This requirement will be revisited in the future.
  • Code review:
    • Gijs raised a PR to amend rviz PR template for the code review pilot.
    • We discussed to add an additional repository to the pilot. These repositories were discussed:
      • ros_comm
      • ros_control
      • navigation
      • ROS2 rcl_cpp
      • ROS2 actionlib
    • We decided to go ahead with ros_comm repository and contact Dirk Thomas with the suggestion.
  • “Maintenance issue”:
    • We picked up the discussion on the topic of maintenance.
      • I proposed to discuss a funding model for maintenance. This suggestion was questioned as it implies that money will address the issue.
      • I was asked how other communities manage to get maintainers and how they are different than ROS? I discussed that the underlying participation motivation for ROS contributors differs fundamentally from other communities. While the ROS community contributors are passionate about innovation, but not necessarily the output quality, other community direct their passion to both innovation and the quality of the output. Other opinions and ideas have been discussed:
        • The motivation for quality is a cultural issue in the ROS community.
        • If it is a cultural issue then entry barriers should be eased to facilitate the entry of new comers with diverse interest (i.e. quality, documentation, etc.)
  • Agenda for next month meeting:
    • I suggested to spend next month session to do some reflection on the group work.
      • It has been a year since the group has been established and it’s an opportunity to reflect in our work process, achievements and areas of improvements. Any feedback and suggestions for the community are welcomed.