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I'm looking for feedback and advice from the community.

Jazzy is the latest LTS version of ROS 2, but it’s only supported as tier 3 packages on Ubuntu 22.04. While it's possible to build it from source, it's a lengthy and cumbersome process, and I’d prefer not to repeat it on multiple devices (I know we can copy the colcon install directory and install dependencies via rosdep). Additionally, I’d prefer not to use a Dockerised solution and want to run it natively.

To solve this, I’ve started building Debian packages. So far, I’ve successfully created packages for ros_core and ros_base, and they work similarly to how Humble packages function on my Ubuntu 22.04 host.

My questions are:

  1. Does this approach seem reasonable, or are there better alternatives available?
  2. Once the Debian packages are ready, I plan to host them in a Debian pool for others to use, with both amd64 and arm64 architectures available. I’m thinking of hosting them on GitHub in a public repository. Is this a good solution, or are there better alternatives for hosting these packages?

Looking forward to your suggestions!

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  • $\begingroup$ Jazzy is Tier 1 on Ubuntu 22.04, so either clarify your question, or follow the install instructions. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 11, 2024 at 11:14
  • $\begingroup$ ROS 2 Jazzy is not classified as Tier 1 on Ubuntu 22.04; it is supported as Tier 1 on Ubuntu 24.04. For more information, please refer to the following link: System Requirements for Jazzy on Ubuntu. Since I am aiming to use ROS 2 Jazzy on Ubuntu 22.04, I will need to build it from source. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 12, 2024 at 10:20
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, my mistake. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 12, 2024 at 10:55

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Once the Debian packages are ready, I plan to host them in a Debian pool for others to use, with both amd64 and arm64 architectures available. I’m thinking of hosting them on GitHub in a public repository. Is this a good solution, or are there better alternatives for hosting these packages?

GitHub's package server does not have features for apt repositories and I haven't found a or been able to build an apt repository frontend for GitHub Pages that doesn't rely on pushing deb files into the GitHub Pages artifact itself, and even then my goal for that project was to easily create repositories for one or two standalone packages, not an entire distribution.

To host these repositories in the most commonly consumed way, you would need a static web host (anything from self-hosted to cloud storage like S3) or dedicated apt repository hosting like PackageCloud or Artifactory.

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  • $\begingroup$ I think there is some misunderstanding here. I'm planning to port entire ROS 2 Jazzy on Ubuntu Jammy 22.04 platform not only one or two packages. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 12, 2024 at 10:16
  • $\begingroup$ I understand that, I want to tell you that GitHub does not have any way to distribute packages in apt repositories which would be easily consumable on Debian. The closest I've come to making that work was with GitHub Pages and even then I only planned to use it for repositories with one or two packages, not a whole distro. $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 20, 2024 at 15:34
  • $\begingroup$ I believe we can use github. It is even mentioned in debian documentation. Here is the example which I have hosted on github: github.com/meetgandhi-dev/ros2_tier3_packages/blob/main/docs/… $\endgroup$ Commented Dec 22, 2024 at 6:13
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Instead of hosting a new alternative binary distribution you might consider contributing to the Robostack project.

https://github.com/RoboStack/ros-jazzy/

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  • $\begingroup$ It looks like they've got desktop-full for Linux built at this point: robostack.github.io/jazzy.html $\endgroup$ Commented Jan 14 at 13:35
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Sounds great! We have similar problems and would really like the packages (especially for arm) to be open source.

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