Current Distribution Releases
Distro |
Release date |
Poster |
Tuturtle, turtle in tutorial |
ROS Groovy Galapagos (Recommended) |
December 31, 2012 |
|
|
April 23, 2012 |
|
|
|
August 30, 2011 |
|
|
|
March 2, 2011 |
|
|
|
August 2, 2010 |
|
|
|
March 2, 2010 |
|
|
Next Distribution Release
expected release April, 2013 |
|
|
Details
The details on the distributions is in the rep documentation.
What is a Distribution?
A set of versioned ROS stacks forms a ROS Distribution. These are akin to Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu). We are currently providing a ROS distribution, which contains different variants for different robot platforms. Much like Linux distributions, they make it much easier for developers to target a consistent set of libraries to develop and test on. Also, we are providing patches for distributions so that developers are not forced to switch to bleeding edge, unstable code just to incorporate important bug fixes.
For example, the following stacks could form a ROS Distribution:
- the ROS core stack, version 1.0
common_msgs, version 1.0
visualization_msgs, version 1.0
- and so on
Stack maintainers are encouraged to continue pushing their work forward to match the most recent stable ROS release, but this distribution-release system will provide greater stability and fixed integration points. Just like you can upgrade the "host" Linux distribution all at once (e.g., from Ubuntu 08.10 to Ubuntu 09.04), the ROS distribution system lets you work against a stable codebase until you are ready to roll everything forward all at once.
The rosdistro format supports alternate distributions. There are many different types of robots with different needs, and we anticipate that others may put together their own distributions in the future to better target these platforms.