This document is a declaration of software quality for the rcutils
package, based on the guidelines in REP-2004.
The package rcutils
claims to be in the Quality Level 1 category.
Below are the rationales, notes, and caveats for this claim, organized by each requirement listed in the Package Quality Categories in REP-2004 of the ROS2 developer guide.
rcutils
uses semver
according to the recommendation for ROS Core packages in the ROS 2 Developer Guide
rcutils
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.
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.
Additionally, there are generated header files which are installed and therefore part of the public API.
The source templates for these generated headers are in the resource
folder.
rcutils
will not break public API within a released ROS distribution, i.e. no major releases once the ROS distribution is released.
rcutils
contains C code and therefore must be concerned with ABI stability, and will maintain ABI stability within a ROS distribution.
rcutils
will not break API nor ABI within a released ROS distribution, i.e. no major releases once the ROS distribution is released.
rcutils
follows the recommended guidelines for ROS Core packages in the ROS 2 Developer Guide.
All changes will occur through a pull request, check ROS 2 Developer Guide for additional information.
This package uses DCO as its confirmation of contributor origin policy. More information can be found in CONTRIBUTING
All pull request will be peer-reviewed, check ROS 2 Developer Guide for additional information.
All pull request must pass CI on all tier 1 platforms
Currently nightly results can be seen here:
All pull requests must resolve related documentation changes before merging
rcutils
has a documented feature list and it is hosted here.
rcutils
has documentation of its public API and it is hosted here.
The license for rcutils
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.
The copyright holders each provide a statement of copyright in each source code file in rcutils
.
There is an automated test which runs a linter that ensures each file has at least one copyright statement. Latest linter result report can be seen here.
Each feature in rcutils
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:
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.
rcutils
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 summarized from this page, can be found in the "ROS 2 Onboarding Guide".
rcutils
follows the recommendations for performance testing of C code in the ROS 2 Developer Guide, and opts to do performance analysis on each release rather than each change.
System level performance benchmarks that cover features of rcutils
can be found at:
Changes that introduce regressions in performance must be adequately justified in order to be accepted and merged.
rcutils
uses and passes all the ROS2 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:
rcutils
has no run-time or build-time dependencies that need to be considered for this declaration.
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.
rcutils
has no run-time or build-time dependencies that need to be considered for this declaration.
rcutils
has no run-time or build-time dependencies that need to be considered for this declaration.
rcutils
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:
This package conforms to the Vulnerability Disclosure Policy in REP-2006.
The chart below compares the requirements in the REP-2004 with the current state of the rcutils package.
Number | Requirement | Current state |
---|---|---|
1 | Version policy | --- |
1.i | Version Policy available | ✓ |
1.ii | Stable version | ✓ |
1.iii | Declared public API | ✓ |
1.iv | API stability policy | ✓ |
1.v | ABI stability policy | ✓ |
1.vi_ | API/ABI stable within ros distribution | ✓ |
2 | Change control process | --- |
2.i | All changes occur on change request | ✓ |
2.ii | Contributor origin (DCO, CLA, etc) | ✓ |
2.iii | Peer review policy | ✓ |
2.iv | CI policy for change requests | ✓ |
2.v | Documentation policy for change requests | ✓ |
3 | Documentation | --- |
3.i | Per feature documentation | ✓ |
3.ii | Per public API item documentation | ✓ |
3.iii | Declared License(s) | ✓ |
3.iv | Copyright in source files | ✓ |
3.v.a | Quality declaration linked to README | ✓ |
3.v.b | Centralized declaration available for peer review | ✓ |
4 | Testing | --- |
4.i | Feature items tests | ✓ |
4.ii | Public API tests | ✓ |
4.iii.a | Using coverage | ✓ |
4.iii.a | Coverage policy | ✓ |
4.iv.a | Performance tests (if applicable) | ✓ |
4.iv.b | Performance tests policy | ✓ |
4.v.a | Code style enforcement (linters) | ✓ |
4.v.b | Use of static analysis tools | ✓ |
5 | Dependencies | --- |
5.i | Must not have ROS lower level dependencies | ✓ |
5.ii | Optional ROS lower level dependencies | ✓ |
5.iii | Justifies quality use of non-ROS dependencies | ✓ |
6 | Platform support | --- |
6.i | Support targets Tier1 ROS platforms | ✓ |
7 | Security | --- |
7.i | Vulnerability Disclosure Policy | ✓ |