QUALITY_DECLARATION

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

rclcpp Quality Declaration

The package rclcpp claims to be in the Quality Level 1 category when it is used with a Quality Level 1 middleware.

Below are the rationales, notes, and caveats for this claim, organized by each requirement listed in the Package Requirements for Quality Level 1 in REP-2004.

Version Policy [1]

Version Scheme [1.i]

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

Version Stability [1.ii]

rclcpp 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.

Except for the exclusions listed below, all installed headers are in the include directory of the package, headers in any other folders are not installed and considered private. Headers under the folder experimental are not considered part of the public API as they have not yet been stabilized. These symbols are namespaced rclcpp::experimental. Headers under the folder detail are not considered part of the public API and are subject to change without notice. These symbols are namespaced rclcpp::detail.

API Stability Policy [1.iv]

rclcpp 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]

rclcpp contains C++ code and therefore must be concerned with ABI stability, and will maintain ABI stability within a ROS distribution.

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

rclcpp 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]

rclcpp follows the recommended guidelines for ROS Core packages in the ROS 2 Developer Guide.

Change Requests [2.i]

All changes will occur through a pull request, check ROS 2 Developer Guide for additional information.

Contributor Origin [2.ii]

This package uses DCO as its confirmation of contributor origin policy. More information can be found in CONTRIBUTING.

Peer Review Policy [2.iii]

All pull requests will be peer-reviewed, check ROS 2 Developer Guide for additional information.

Continuous Integration [2.iv]

All pull requests must pass CI on all tier 1 platforms

Currently nightly results can be seen here:

Documentation Policy [2.v]

All pull requests must resolve related documentation changes before merging.

Documentation [3]

Feature Documentation [3.i]

rclcpp has a feature list and each item in the list links to the corresponding feature documentation. There is documentation for all of the features, and new features require documentation before being added.

Public API Documentation [3.ii]

The API is publicly available in its ROS 2 API documentation.

License [3.iii]

The license for rclcpp is Apache 2.0, and a summary is in each source file, the type is declared in the package.xml manifest file, and a full copy of the license is in the LICENSE file.

There is an automated test which runs a linter that ensures each file has a license statement. Here can be found a list with the latest results of the various linters being run on the package.

Testing [4]

Feature Testing [4.i]

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

Currently nightly test results can be seen here:

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]

rclcpp follows the recommendations for ROS Core packages in the ROS 2 Developer Guide, and opts to use line coverage instead of branch coverage.

This includes:

  • tracking and reporting line coverage statistics

  • achieving and maintaining a reasonable branch line coverage (90-100%)

  • no lines are manually skipped in coverage calculations

Changes are required to make a best effort to keep or increase coverage before being accepted, but decreases are allowed if properly justified and accepted by reviewers.

Current coverage statistics can be viewed here. A description of how coverage statistics are calculated is summarized in this page “ROS 2 Onboarding Guide”.

rclcpp has a line coverage >= 95%, which is calculated over all directories within rclcpp with the exception of the experimental directory.

Performance [4.iv]

rclcpp follows the recommendations for performance testing of C/C++ code in the ROS 2 Developer Guide, and opts to do performance analysis on each release rather than each change.

The performance tests of rclcpp are located in the test/benchmark directory.

System level performance benchmarks that cover features of rclcpp can be found at:

Changes that introduce regressions in performance must be adequately justified in order to be accepted and merged.

Linters and Static Analysis [4.v]

rclcpp uses and passes all the ROS 2 standard linters and static analysis tools for a C++ package as described in the ROS 2 Developer Guide. Passing implies there are no linter/static errors when testing against CI of supported platforms.

Currently nightly test results can be seen here:

Dependencies [5]

Below are evaluations of each of rclcpp’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 and Optional Runtime ROS Dependencies [5.i]/[5.ii]

rclcpp has the following runtime ROS dependencies:

libstatistics_collector

The libstatistics_collector package provides lightweight aggregation utilities to collect statistics and measure message metrics.

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

rcl

rcl a library to support implementation of language specific ROS 2 Client Libraries.

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

rcl_yaml_param_parser

The rcl_yaml_param_parser package provides an API that is used to parse YAML configuration files which may be used to configure ROS and specific nodes.

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

rcpputils

The rcpputils package provides an API which contains common utilities and data structures useful when programming in C++.

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

rcutils

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

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

rmw

rmw is the ROS 2 middleware library.

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

statistics_msgs

The statistics_msgs package contains ROS 2 message definitions for reporting statistics for topics and system resources.

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

tracetools

The tracetools package provides utilities for instrumenting the code in rclcpp so that it may be traced for debugging and performance analysis.

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

Direct Runtime non-ROS Dependency [5.iii]

rclcpp has no run-time or build-time dependencies that need to be considered for this declaration.

Platform Support [6]

rclcpp supports all of the tier 1 platforms as described in REP-2000, and tests each change against all of them.

Currently nightly build status can be seen here:

Security

Vulnerability Disclosure Policy [7.i]

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