Version numbers removed from package names in Gazebo Jetty

General
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Current Gazebo releases include the major version number of a Gazebo package in its package name. This allows multiple versions of packages to be installed side-by-side but induces churn each year for the maintainers when releasing new versions and for users when upgrading to new versions. For example, when upgrading from Harmonic to Ionic:

  • In cmake, change find_package(gz-math7) to find_package(gz-math8) and any references to gz-math7::* cmake targets to gz-math8::*
  • In python, change import gz.math7 to import gz-math8
  • In package.xml, change <depend>gz-math7</depend> to <depend>gz-math8</depend>

The Gazebo PMC has decided to change package names in Gazebo Jetty to not include version names (with the exception of gz-tools, which will be explained below), following the proposal in gazebo-tooling/release-tools#1244 (comment) with the following user-facing changes:

  • The version number is removed from cmake project names (gz-math) and shared library names (libgz-math.so).
  • In cmake, you can find_package(gz-math) and link to the gz-math::gz-math cmake target. Note that you can still find a specific version using the second argument: find_package(gz-math 9.0).
  • In python, you can import gz.math
  • In package.xml, you can <depend>gz-math</depend>

The migration to Gazebo Jetty will be the last time users need to modify these bits of code when upgrading.

The trade-off is that future versions of Gazebo will not be side-by-side installable in the same prefix, since cmake configuration files and python bindings with the same names will conflict with each other. Given that colcon workspaces and containers provide other options to install multiple versions of Gazebo on the same system, the Gazebo PMC decided this was an acceptable trade-off. This consequence will not be immediately felt, however, as Jetty will be side-by-side installable with Ionic, Harmonic, and Fortress that have versioned package names. This is possible because of the one exception to continue using the same gz-tools2 version in Jetty that is also used in Ionic to avoid name conflicts with the gz executable. With the Gazebo K release, the package will be renamed to gz-tools with major version 3.

To reduce the scope of this change, version numbers have not yet been removed from debian package names (libgz-math9-dev), though this is under consideration for the future. See the discussion in gazebo-tooling/release-tools#1244 for further details.

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Great job! I really appreciate this change!

Out of curiosity: is this something that originates from the recent user feedback survey?

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A project is nothing without the feedback of the users :slight_smile:

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I believe you’re referring to the Gazebo Classic End of Life and Migration Survey posted in January 2024. In May 2024, Addisu referenced the results of that survey and the complexity of having version numbers in package names as an inspiration to work on the ROS vendor packages:

From my perspective, we’ve been looking for ways to better integrate Gazebo and ROS for some time (e.g. use of ign-math in Rviz starting in Humble), and the vendor packages idea was brought up as one approach as we were brainstorming on how to package Gazebo for Jazzy since it wasn’t going to be available in upstream Ubuntu Noble. But the feedback we got, especially around the complexity caused by having the major version number in the names of packages, definitely encouraged us to pursue the vendor package idea. So I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who filled out the survey!

So while I wasn’t specifically thinking of the survey when I opened release-tools#1244, it was a follow-up to the vendor packages work and a known pain point for users.

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