Contents
Development Practices
Please see the ROS Developer's Guide.
Best Practices
Please see ROS Best Practices.
Developer-related Mailing Lists
In addition to the ros-users list, we also have a ros-commits list for commit messages. (Note: on 7-14-2011, ros-developers and ros-review were rolled into ros-users).
Please see the for a complete list of mailing lists and to signup.
IRC
#ROS on irc.oftc.net. Not an "official" channel... but it is there.
Create Your Own *-ros-pkg Repository
There are over seventy ROS Repositories hosted by companies, universities, and individuals around the world. Whether you're releasing one ROS package or hundreds, feel free to start your own repository to share your code with the rest of the community.
Documenting Your *-ros-pkg Repository on ROS.org
Once you've created your own *-ros-pkg repository, you can document your stacks and packages on ROS.org. Start by submitting your repository to be added to our index. You can do this by e-mailing ros-users.
Once your repository has been indexed, you'll be able to create and edit your home page at ros.org/wiki/*-ros-pkg. You can look at utexas-art-ros-pkg or ccny-ros-pkg as an example of what a home page might look like, but you can do anything you want. All of your packages and stacks will show up as ROS wiki pages. We encourage you to create usage documentation, tutorials, reviews, or whatever other content you want.
The following wiki pages have guidelines to help you get started with documenting on the wiki:
Some exemplars of good wiki documentation:
Sharing with Others
The ros-users mailing list is a great forum for letting others in the community know about your latest creations and updates.
Staying Up-to-Date with Current Development
If you go to the Distributions page, you will see a list of current and future ROS distribution pages. Planning notes for upcoming distributions will be on the relevant wiki page, e.g. Diamondback Planning.
You can also monitor the ROS.org news site for announcements from the community.
ROS Enhancement Proposals (REPs)
The REP process, closely modeled on Python's PEP process, allows the community to participate in the ongoing development of ROS. For more information, see the REPs page.
Contribute Patches and Close Bugs
There is a lot of open tickets in the ROS community. Ones which are looking for new owners are posted on the Handoff List page.
Participating in Software Reviews
Design and peer review documentation for ROS packages are available online. On every package or stack page, e.g. actionlib, there is a link to 'Reviews' that will show you a list of any API or documentation reviews that have occurred. These review notes generally contain design goals and motivation as well.
To participate in the reviews, you can sign up for the ros-users list here:
https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
The general process for a review is:
- Maintainer puts together documentation for review (e.g. documenting APIs, design notes)
- Maintainer creates a new review page for the review that links to the relevant documentation
A week before the review meeting, an e-mail is sent to ros-users
- Comments are collected in the review page
- Meeting is held where comments are reviewed. If necessary, review process is repeated until approval is reached.
While meetings have generally been held in person, it is possible to have open meetings (e.g. IRC) if people express interest on the mailing list.