SAVE THE DATE: Iron Irwini Testing and Tutorial Party, 2023-05-03T16:00:00Z
As many of you are already aware, the ROS 2 Iron Irwini release is just around the corner: Tuesday, May 23rd, to be exact! We want this to be our best ROS 2 release yet, and to get there we need to make sure that we thoroughly test Iron before it is released to the general public. We also want to make sure that the ROS documentation on docs.ros.org continues to be clear, concise, and correct. That’s where we need your help! We’re looking for community volunteers to join us for our first ever ROS Testing and Tutorial Party. If you are looking to start dipping your toes into ROS development this is a great place to start.
The Gazebo team successfully pioneered tutorial parties for their previous three releases, and the process has led to a better overall user experience for the project. We want to replicate that success for ROS starting with Iron Irwini. So, what is a testing and tutorial party you may ask? Well, it is a chance for the community to meet and systematically review all of the current ROS tutorials while also testing the latest ROS release.
After the feature freeze on April 17th the core developer team will generate a set of “early release” binary and source packages for ROS 2 Iron Irwini and make them publicly available. During the Testing and Tutorial party we’ll release a testing repository with a long list of tests we would like to run on the early release version of Iron Irwini. These tests will first ask developers to pick a particular release “setup”, and then run either the test suite or work through one or more of the existing ROS 2 tutorials on docs.ros.org. When we say “setup” we mean a specific combination of RMW vendor (FastDDS / Cyclone DDS / Connext DDS), build type (binary / debian / source), host operating system (Ubuntu Jammy / RHEL-9 / Windows), and chip architecture (amd64 / aarch64). For each setup, we would like to perform a number of tests that validate our tutorials, core ROS functionality, and important features. With fifty-four possible setup configurations, testing each and every one internally isn’t feasible. To ensure reproducibility of the tests it’s also valuable to get multiple evaluations of each test, which is why we need your help!
Tutorial party participants are asked to perform the tests they sign up for and report back the results. If you happen to find an issue or bug while participating in the tutorial party you’ll need to report it to us so it can get corrected before the Iron release.
We are planning to kick-off the tutorial party off on 2023-05-03T16:00:00Z with a meeting where we explain the whole Testing and Tutorial Party Process, that meeting can be found on the ROS events calendar. We’ll record the meeting and post instruction on ROS Discourse for those who can’t make the meeting. To help motivate tutorial party participants we’ll be giving away ROS Iron Irwini swag to the testers who complete the most tests during the tutorial party. Every time you complete a test or tutorial you will need to close the Github issue, and then fill out a short Google form. The Testing and Tutorial party participants with the most completed tests during the tutorial party will receive a credit to Zazzle to pick out some Iron swag. I’ve seen the Iron Irwini release graphics, and I think it might be my favorite so far. We’ll post more details about the tutorial party in about three weeks when we kick things off. For now, we’re outlining a rough sequence of events so everyone can set aside some time to participate. Here are the key dates you’ll want to remember:
- 2023-05-03T07:00:00Z Tutorial & Testing Party begins
- 2023-05-03T16:00:00Z Tutorial & Testing Party Hangout + Q&A
- 2023-05-08T07:00:00Z ROS 2 Iron Irwini logo announcement and merchandise sale opening
- 2023-05-16T07:00:00Z Tutorial & Testing Party ends
- 2023-05-23T07:00:00Z ROS 2 Iron Irwini released
We’ll add these events to the ROS events calendar, but the big one that you won’t want to miss is the kick-off event on 2023-05-03T16:00:00Z. At this tutorial party kickoff meeting we’ll walk everyone through the steps involved in participation. In the meantime we would like your help spreading the word about the Testing and Tutorial Party. We hope to see you there on May 3rd!
Finally, if you would like to help support the Open Source Robotics Foundation and events like these, consider making a donation via their Donor Box account.