You're reading the documentation for an older, but still supported, version of ROS 2. For information on the latest version, please have a look at Jazzy.
Release Team / Repository
This page explains the recommended method of hosting your release repositories on ros2-gbp.
What is ROS 2 GBP?
ros2-gbp is a GitHub organization that hosts the release repositories for ROS packages. It also maintains a list of release teams, the list of members per release team and the list of release repositories maintained by the release teams in https://github.com/ros2-gbp/ros2-gbp-github-org. Interactions with ros2-gbp-github-org are done through raising GitHub issues. It is recommended that you request to join a release team and set up a release repository early as it can take some time for the ros2-gbp maintainers to respond to your requests.
What is a release team?
A release team is a GitHub team that consists of a group of people who are responsible for the release process of one or more repositories. Release teams are often made up of an organization, a working group, or even an individual, and are named after the team or group that they represent. The list of release teams and their associated release repositories are maintained at ros2-gbp-github-org.
You must be a part of the release team that you are planning on releasing the project for. If you intend to release the repository under an existing team, follow Join a release team. If you intend to start a new team, follow Start a new release team.
Join a release team
Fill the Update Release Team Membership issue issue template if a release team already exists for your project but you are not part of it.
Start a new release team
If no release team exists for your project yet, fill out the New Release Team issue issue template to request one be created.
What is a release repository?
A release repository is a repository that
stores files generated from the release process, for the ROS buildfarm to use
caches configurations from the release process to simplify subsequent releases of the repository in the future
Having a release repository separate from your source code repository is a requirement for making a release in ROS 2.
Create a new release repository
If your repository is new to the ROS community, you should first open a pull request on ros/rosdistro adding a source entry for your repository (e.g. https://github.com/ros/rosdistro/pull/39513).
The review process for the rosdistro database will ensure your repository and packages conform to the REP 144 package naming conventions and other requirements before release.
Once your package name has been approved and merged, fill in the Add New Release Repositories issue issue template
if you don’t have a release repo for your project yet.
What if my existing release repo isn’t on ros2-gbp?
Packages released before ros2-gbp existed may have their release repositories hosted elsewhere. It is now strongly recommended for release repositories to live in this dedicated GitHub organization. If you are porting a ROS 1 package to ROS 2 and planning on releasing your packages into ROS 2 for the first time, follow standard procedure to request for a new release repository for your ROS 2 releases. If you have previously released your packages for ROS 2, when raising the Add New Release Repositories issue, specify your current release repository url, and follow standard procedure for the rest.
Note
Release repositories hosted elsewhere are still supported for stable distributions if you are not planning to release the repository into Rolling. Since stable distributions created from Rolling will start with release repositories in the ros2-gbp organization it is recommend that you use the ros2-gbp release repositories for all ROS 2 distributions to avoid fragmenting the release information.
A ros2-gbp release repository may become a hard requirement in the future and maintaining a single release repository for all ROS 2 distributions simplifies the maintenance of releases for both the Rolling distribution maintainers and package maintainers.