Roadmap to the first release of the ROS package

[j-rivero]

The issue summarize the actions related to finalize the release of Drake into the official ROS Buildfarm. It includes mandatory (required) actions and improvements marked as such. When some of the fields are missing for some items it means that they do not apply (i.e: no Follow-ups means nothing needs to be done after the completion of the item).

Drake upstream source code

• [ 🔥 required] Release of 1.27
  • Reason: avoid the workarounds detailed in Running make execute make install target in Drake #10.
  • Next-step by: Drake upstream team
  • Follow-ups for the Drake team: update code in this repository, specially the CMakelists.txt and package.xml. Close Running make execute make install target in Drake #10.

ros-drake-vendor source code

• [ 🔥 required] Version of the ROS package might not be exactly the same that upstream Drake #16

  • Reason: decide a compatible version schema for the ros-drake-vendor version to allow changes in this repo.
  • Next-step by: Drake team
  • Follow-ups: modify Use the version from package.xml to grab VCS version #15 accordingly and merge.

• [optional] Complete the package.xml license information #13

  • Reason: better description of licensing used by Drake upstream code
  • Next-step by: anyone

• [optional] Use system versions of lcm on Ubuntu Noble

  • Reason: avoid problems detailed in lcm packaging (libjchart2d-java not available in rosdistro) #3. Current code installs the binaries under /opt/ros/rolling/opt/drake/bin/lcm-gen which is not in the PATH.
  • Follow-ups for the Drake team: add the lcm rosdep key to the rosdistro index, add it to the dependencies in package.xml and disable the build of lcm in Drake upstream code when building the ros-drake-vendor package.

• [optional] Automation tooling for upkeep of package.xml #12

  • Reason: keep in sync the metadata between Drake upstream and ros-drake-vendor
  • Next-step by: anyone

ROS buildfarm changes

• [ 🔥 required] Increase timeout for the Drake build when releasing

  • Reason: the current buildfarm has a limit of 120 minutes timeout for building. While the OSRA infra team adopts one of the solutions / workaround proposed, the Drake team will require the OSRA infra team to remove the limitation manually when a new release of Drake is going to be made.
  • Next-step by: OSRA to implement a solution. Drake team to require OSRA infra assistance when releasing.
  • Follow-ups for the Drake team: if the per-package timeout is implemented, include Drake in the ros_buildfarm configuration with a higher timeout.

• [ 🔥 required] ROS buildfarm uses ccache while Drake refuse to be built with it #9

  • Reason: Drake can not be build with the ccache wrapper and the Buildfarm uses it. The issue links to a PR to remove the ccache in the ROS buildfarm since it is not really in use in package building.
  • Next-step by: OSRA infra team to iterate and merge the PR.

First release configurations

• ROS Release / Ubuntu version to chose: all the testing (until the time of writing) has been done using the Ubuntu Jammy LTS 22.04. For the first official release is probably a good not to use ROS 2 Rolling (migrated last week to Ubuntu Noble 24.04) but to use ROS 2 Humble that runs on Jammy. The github action setup in this repo (merged in Initial ROS drake package and repository information #6) runs this configuration.
• Releasing a ROS package: standard instructions using bloom to release a ROS package will apply for the first time release.

[j-rivero]

Updated: introduced as required #16.

[j-rivero]

Removed:

• [ 🔥 required] Limiting the building threads to 1 for compiling in the ROS buildfarm #1
  • Reason: without limiting the number of compilations threads in the ROS buildfarm the Drake build probably make the system to run out of memory.
  • Next-step by: OSRA infra team to iterate and merge the PR.

The initial support for limiting the threads has been merged.

[j-rivero]

Update: problems with CI for the 1.27 release

[j-rivero]

Removed:

• [optional] Build artifacts can not be removed on the Jenkins buildfarm #11
  • Reason: if the PR is not merged, the ROS buildfarm will present problems of cleaning up the workspace after the first build. Marked as optional since the ROS buildfarm team can operate the cleanup manually.
  • Next-step by: OSRA infra team to iterate and merge the PR.

[j-rivero]

Updated after lcm 1.5 landed in Ubuntu Nodle (next step for drake team):

• [optional] Use system versions of lcm on Ubuntu Noble
  • Reason: avoid problems detailed in lcm packaging (libjchart2d-java not available in rosdistro) #3. Current code installs the binaries under /opt/ros/rolling/opt/drake/bin/lcm-gen which is not in the PATH.
  • Follow-ups for the Drake team: add the lcm rosdep key to the rosdistro index, add it to the dependencies in package.xml and disable the build of lcm in Drake upstream code when building the ros-drake-vendor package.