QUALITY_DECLARATION

This document is a declaration of software quality for the rclc package, based on the guidelines in REP-2004.

rclc Quality Declaration

The package rclc claims to be in the Quality Level 2 category when it is used with a Quality Level 2 middleware.

Below are the rationales, notes, and caveats for this claim, organized by each requirement listed in the Package Quality Categories in REP-2004.

Version Policy [1]

Version Scheme [1.i]

rclc uses semver according to the recommendation for ROS Core packages in the ROS 2 Developer Guide.

Version Stability [1.ii]

rclc is at a stable version, i.e. >= 1.0.0. The current version can be found in its package.xml, and its change history can be found in its CHANGELOG.

Public API Declaration [1.iii]

All symbols in the installed headers are considered part of the public API.

All installed headers are in the include directory of the package, headers in any other folders are not installed and considered private.

API Stability Policy [1.iv]

rclc will not break public API within a released ROS distribution, i.e. no major releases once the ROS distribution is released.

ABI Stability Policy [1.v]

rclc contains C code and therefore must be concerned with ABI stability and will maintain ABI stability within a ROS distribution. Because an ABI-break is considered as major version change, there will be no major releases once the ROS distribution is released.

API and ABI Stability Within a Released ROS Distribution [1.vi]

rclc will not break API nor ABI within a released ROS distribution, i.e. no major releases once the ROS distribution is released.

Change Control Process [2]

The stability of rclc is ensured through reviews, CI and tests. The change control process can be found in CONTRIBUTING.

All changes to rclc occur through pull requests that are required to pass all CI tests. In case of failure, only maintainers can merge the pull request, and only when there is enough evidence that the failure is unrelated to the change. Additionally, all pull requests must have at least one positive review from another contributor that did not author the pull request.

Change Requests [2.i]

All changes will occur through a pull request.

Contributor Origin [2.ii]

This package uses Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) as its confirmation of contributor origin policy since version 1.0.0. More information can be found in CONTRIBUTING.

Peer Review Policy [2.iii]

All pull requests will be peer-reviewed by at least one other contributor who did not author the pull request. Approval is required before merging.

Continuous Integration [2.iv]

All pull requests must pass CI to be considered for merging, unless maintainers consider that there is enough evidence that the failure is unrelated to the changes. CI testing is automatically triggered by incoming pull requests. Current results can be seen ../README.md.

Documentation Policy [2.v]

All pull requests must resolve related documentation changes before merging.

Documentation [3]

Feature Documentation [3.i]

rclc features are documented in the package README.md and in the header files.

Public API Documentation [3.ii]

rclc has embedded API documentation.

License [3.iii]

The license for rclc is Apache 2.0, and a summary can be found in each source file. A full copy of the license can be found here.

Testing [4]

Feature Testing [4.i]

rclc provides tests which simulate typical usage, and they are located in the test directory. New features are required to have tests before being added as stated in CONTRIBUTING. Current results can be seen ../README.md.

Most features in rclc have corresponding tests which simulate typical usage, and they are located in the test directory. New features are required to have tests before being added.

Public API Testing [4.ii]

Each part of the public API has tests, and new additions or changes to the public API require tests before being added. The tests aim to cover both typical usage and corner cases, but are quantified by contributing to code coverage.

Coverage [4.iii]

The coverage report is available in the ../README.md.

rclc checks the coverage of every commit. Last coverage assessment can be seen in Codecov.

Coverage [4.iv]

Performance tests for rclc have not been implemented.

Linters and Static Analysis [4.v]

rclc code style is enforced using uncrustify. Among the CI tests, there are tests that ensure that every pull request is compliant with the code style. The latest CI results can be seen ../README.md.

rclc uses and passes all the standard linters and static analysis tools for a C99 package as described in the ROS 2 Developer Guide.

Results of the latest linter tests can be found in the ../README.md

Dependencies [5]

Below are evaluations of each of rclc’s run-time and build-time dependencies that have been determined to influence the quality.

It has several “buildtool” dependencies, which do not affect the resulting quality of the package, because they do not contribute to the public library API. It also has several test dependencies, which do not affect the resulting quality of the package, because they are only used to build and run the test code.

Direct Runtime ROS Dependencies [5.i]

rcl

The rcl package provides the API of the common library to support implementation of language specific ROS Client Libraries.

It is Quality Level 1, see its Quality Declaration document.

rcutils

The rcutils package provides an API which contains common utilities and data structures needed when programming in C.

It is Quality Level 1, see its Quality Declaration document.

rosidl_generator_c

The rosidl_generator_c package is a core-ros package and provides an API that generates message types for C programming language.

The quality statement for this repository is not available.

Optional Direct Runtime ROS Dependencies [5.ii]

rclc has no optional Direct Runtime ROS dependencies that need to be considered for this declaration.

Direct Runtime non-ROS Dependency [5.iii]

rclc has no Direct Runtime non-ROS dependencies that need to be considered for this declaration.

Platform Support [6]

rclc supports all of the tier 1 platforms as described in REP-2000 for Galactic Release (i.e.: Linux amd64, Linux arm64 and Windows 10), and tests each change against all of them.

Security [7]

Vulnerability Disclosure Policy [7.i]

This package conforms to the Vulnerability Disclosure Policy in REP-2006.

Current status Summary

The chart below compares the requirements in the REP-2004 with the current state of the rclc package.

Number

Requirement

Current state

1

Version policy

—

1.i

Version Policy available

✓

1.ii

Stable version

✓

1.iii

Declared public API

✓

1.iv

API stability policy

✓

1.v

ABI stability policy

✓

1.vi

API/ABI stable within ros distribution

✓

2

Change control process

—

2.i

All changes occur on change request

✓

2.ii

Contributor origin (DCO, CLA, etc)

✓

2.iii

Peer review policy

✓

2.iv

CI policy for change requests

✓

2.v

Documentation policy for change requests

✓

3

Documentation

—

3.i

Per feature documentation

✓

3.ii

Per public API item documentation

✓

3.iii

Declared License(s)

✓

3.iv

Copyright in source files

✓

3.v.a

Quality declaration linked to README

✓

3.v.b

Centralized declaration available for peer review

✓

4

Testing

—

4.i

Feature items tests

✓

4.ii

Public API tests

✓

4.iii.a

Using coverage

✓

4.iii.a

Coverage policy

✓

4.iv.a

Performance tests (if applicable)

x

4.iv.b

Performance tests policy

x

4.v.a

Code style enforcement (linters)

✓

4.v.b

Use of static analysis tools

✓

5

Dependencies

—

5.i

Must not have ROS lower level dependencies

✓

5.ii

Optional ROS lower level dependencies

✓

5.iii

Justifies quality use of non-ROS dependencies

✓

6

Platform support

—

6.i

Support targets Tier1 ROS platforms

✓

7

Security

—

7.i

Vulnerability Disclosure Policy

✓