QUALITY_DECLARATION

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

rclcpp_action Quality Declaration

The package rclcpp_action 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_action uses semver according to the recommendation for ROS Core packages in the ROS 2 Developer Guide.

Version Stability [1.ii]

rclcpp_action 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]

rclcpp_action 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_action 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_action 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_action 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_action 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_action 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_action 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_action 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”.

Performance [4.iv]

rclcpp_action 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_action are located in the test/benchmark directory.

System level performance benchmarks that cover features of rclcpp_action 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_action 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_action’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_action has the following runtime ROS dependencies:

action_msgs

action_msgs provides messages and services for ROS 2 actions.

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

rclcpp

The rclcpp package provides the ROS client library in C++.

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

rcl_action

The rcl_action package provides C-based ROS action implementation.

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

Direct Runtime non-ROS Dependency [5.iii]

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

Platform Support [6]

rclcpp_action 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.