help maintaining ros_comm packages

[dirk-thomas]

If you would like to help maintaining the packages in this repository (or any other ROS repository) please consider to contribute to any of the following efforts:

• Go through open issues:

  • Check if it is still valid
  • If it is a bug try to reproduce the reported problems
  • Consider creating a pull request to fix the bug / implement the feature request (always referencing the original issue)
  • If you don't have the permission (yet) to set labels or close obsolete tickets please just comment with the suggestion and someone will follow up on it.

• Go through open pull requests:

  • Check if it is still valid
    • All pull requests must target the latest development branch which is commonly also the default branch (currently melodic-devel), the only exception is if a patch is only applicable to older branches and not necessary on the default branch
  • If the patch already has feedback which hasn't been addressed by the author consider creating a new PR addressing the pending feedback to make the patch mergable (always referencing the original ticket)
  • Review the patch which includes:
    • Check the diff for problems (unnecessary / unrelated changes, incorrect / incomplete logic, API / ABI breakage, code style matching surrounding code)
    • Reproduce the problem without the patch
    • Apply the patch
    • Reproduce that the problem has been addressed and try to make sure that it doesn't introduce any regressions
    • Ensure that it passes the tests

• Once in a while a new patch release is being made, always into the latest ROS distro first

  • After that has been synced and little soak time has passed these changes are being consider to be backported to the previous ROS distro, see changes between 1.14.3 and 1.13.6 for backporting #1477 for an example, usually backports are limited to bug fixes, enhancement are only considered when they are "easy" to review / argue that they don't introduce regressions and make life of either users or maintainers in older ROS distro more convenient
  • After e.g. a backport from Melodic to Lunar and a following patch release for Lunar the next step can be considered: backporting from Lunar to Kinetic (see e.g. changes between 1.12.13 and 1.13.7 for backporting #1490) and so forth

Please feel free to ask questions on this ticket.

[dirk-thomas]

With maintenance passed to @jacobperron, @mjcarroll, and @sloretz I will go ahead and close this ticket.