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@l4ncelot is completely correct. The APIs and features of ROS have been fairly stable for a long time, likely your older references are completely valid, you'll just need to modify how you install any packages that they are working with. Often a package released on an older ROS version may also...

@l4ncelot is completely correct. The APIs and features of ROS have been fairly stable for a long time, likely your older references are completely valid, you'll just need to modify how you install any packages that they are working with. Often a package released on an older ROS version may also...also be released on a newer ROS version. If that is the case, you simply need to add modify calls to apt-get to refer to melodic instead of Indigo or Kinetic. E.g. sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-std-msgs. To check if a package has been released for Melodic you can try using apt-cache search to search the available packages on your machine:

jarvis@togwotee:~⟫ apt-cache search std-msgs
cl-std-msgs - LISP interface for Standard Robot OS Messages
libstd-msgs-dev - C/C++ headers for Standard Robot OS Messages
python-std-msgs - Python interface for Standard Robot OS Messages
ros-std-msgs - Message definitions for Standard Robot OS Messages
ros-melodic-std-msgs - Standard ROS Messages including common message types representing primitive data types and other basic message constructs, such as multiarrays.

@l4ncelot is completely correct. The APIs and features of ROS have been fairly stable for a long time, likely your older references are completely valid, you'll just need to modify how you install any packages that they are working with. Often a package released on an older ROS version may also be released on a newer ROS version. If that is the case, you simply need to add modify calls to apt-get to refer to melodic instead of Indigo or Kinetic. E.g. sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-std-msgs. To check if a package has been released for Melodic you can try using apt-cache search to search the available packages on your machine:

jarvis@togwotee:~⟫ apt-cache search std-msgs
cl-std-msgs - LISP interface for Standard Robot OS Messages
libstd-msgs-dev - C/C++ headers for Standard Robot OS Messages
python-std-msgs - Python interface for Standard Robot OS Messages
ros-std-msgs - Message definitions for Standard Robot OS Messages
ros-melodic-std-msgs - Standard ROS Messages including common message types representing primitive data types and other basic message constructs, such as multiarrays.

You can also visit the ROS wiki page and check out the status at the top of the page. Clicking the different ROS distributions in blue rectangles right at the top will change page to be for different ROS releases. Right below, there are some green informational bubbles letting you know if the package has been released for that version of ROS. Note that if that particular wiki page doesn't have a Melodic section, that's a good sign the package hasn't been released yet.

If a package hasn't been released yet, it's often just a matter of finding the source code for the package, adding it to your workspace, ensuring you have the correct dependencies (tools like rosdep and rosinstall can help greatly with this) and then running catkin_make. If you're lucky, this will "just work", and it likely will much of the time. In my experience, the most likely packages to have issues are packages related to simulation. This is because Gazebo and its APIs have evolved rapidly and each version of ROS is built around different Gazebo versions. Sometimes API changes in Gazebo are precisely why a particular simulation package hasn't been released in a newer version of ROS.

Finally, you are asking "the community members" to release all packages for all versions of ROS (a tall order for reasons that have nothing little to do with ROS). ROS itself). As a ROS user, you are part of that community. It takes all of our efforts to keep packages up-to-date and bug free. The best way to help ensure a healthy ecosystem is to contribute yourself. File bug reports, submit pull requests, volunteer to maintain orphaned packages, release your own packages, etc. These are all ways you can help the community. This may feel intimidating as a beginner, but stick with it and you'll be ready to help out in no time.