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What is the status of stacks versus packages versus metapackages?

asked 2013-09-05 03:58:29 -0500

I'm wondering what the status and recommendations are regarding stacks versus packages versus metapackages.

In the Groovy documentation it says that "the concept of stacks has been removed", per REP 127.

http://wiki.ros.org/groovy#Removal_of_Stacks

http://ros.org/reps/rep-0127.html).

However everything else on ros.org seems not to have noticed (e.g. http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Concepts).

Is there an updated "ROS concepts" page somewhere I'm not aware of? Has the decision been changed? Is the documentation simply having trouble keeping up?

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answered 2013-09-05 11:49:19 -0500

tfoote gravatar image

updated 2013-09-05 11:50:31 -0500

The Concepts page has not been updated as it's still correct for older versions and stacks are being slowly phased out. Until they are completely phased out we need to keep the documentation. Updates to note the phaseout would be helpful for completeness.

Metapackages are a specific type of package which has no content just dependencies. This replaces the concept of the stack but connects much closer to the metapackage concepts in other package managers.

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Thanks for the clarification. I definitely think it would be a good idea to highlight the fact that stacks are (or will soon be) deprecated, especially in the introductory pages and tutorials. Not only for completeness, but to avoid new stacks being created.

leblanc_kevin gravatar image leblanc_kevin  ( 2013-09-06 11:40:45 -0500 )edit

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Asked: 2013-09-05 03:58:29 -0500

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Last updated: Sep 05 '13