Best practices before including a repository in ROS

asked 2011-10-31 01:07:00 -0500

jrivero
138 ●4 ●5 ●10

We are getting close to release our department ROS repository. We changed the SVN layout so now a trunk/ tags/ and branches/ is available on each stack. The install/update process is handle via rosinstall tool.

Questions are:

We need to provide to the ROS indexer a "whole repository" .rosinstall file, don't we?
Main repository wiki page should be documented before or after asking for inclusion? In the same line, is preferred to create wiki pages for each stack/pkg before or the indexer will create the page for us?
At this moment we haven't got any of our stacks released (using the ROS release tools). is it mandatory, recommended or not related at all before asking for inclusion in the list of repositories?

Thanks.

answered 2011-10-31 02:18:28 -0500

joq
25443 ●181 ●256 ●408

updated 2011-11-01 03:03:42 -0500

Here is a good overview of creating your own ROS repository.

At a minimum, send a message to the ros-users mailing list containing the repository address.

Since git and hg repositories generally require separate source URLs for each stack, you may also wish to provide a .rosinstall file, allowing fine-grained control over your part of the index. (For svn repositories, that is often not needed.)
Wiki pages are not created automatically. You are free to create them before or after announcing the new repository.

Please do create them, using the appropriate wiki templates. Some fields will not appear until the indexer finds your code. That's OK.

Personally, I like to create package and stack pages before they appear in the repository. Then, I can easily tell when the indexer has visited them.
Binary ROS releases are not required, but I would recommend them. A good general open source practice is to "release early and often".

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Comments

Correct, thanks for answering. I'll add for #1, rosinstall files are an option we've added for git/hg repositories, mainly because a single institution ends up having an increasing number of repositories over time, and this gives them control over their part of the index.