ROS2 Galactic EOL

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Galactic is not a Long Term Support (LTS) release, hence the difference wrt Foxy.

From REP 2000: ROS 2 Releases and Target Platforms (this section):

LTS releases

Since Ubuntu LTS releases come with 5 years of standard support we aim to match the same duration. In even years new ROS 2 releases happen shortly (a month) after the Ubuntu LTS has been released (some time in May). The ROS 2 release will be supported until the end of the standard support of the Ubuntu LTS release which is 4 years and 11 months from the ROS 2 release date.

Non-LTS Releases

If every ROS 2 release would have that support we would end up with 5 active releases at the same time which would pose a significant maintenance effort. To lower that effort while still providing releases more frequently than every two years in odd years a non-LTS ROS release is being published. It will target the same Ubuntu LTS as the previous ROS LTS release but is only supported for 1.5 years. The duration will overlap with the next ROS LTS release by 6 months to provide a long enough transition window. We are aware that significantly fewer users will adopt a non-LTS ROS release but think that at least for now it will be worth having to land new features and make them available to users in the time between two LTS releases.

And in Release Schedule:

Release Schedule

Note: the following applies to ROS 2 releases after Foxy Fitzroy. Before, releases were made more frequently but with shorter support due to the fact that many foundational parts of ROS 2 were still heavily iterated on.

TL;DR ROS 2 release schedule post Foxy:

• May 2021: G Turtle: non-LTS release, supported for 1.5 years
• May 2022: H Turtle: LTS release, supported for 5 years
• May 2023: I Turtle: non-LTS release, supported for 1.5 years
• May 2024: J Turtle: LTS release, supported for 5 years
• and so on, alternating annually between LTS and non-LTS releases