ROS 2 Galactic Geochelone Release

We’re happy to announce the seventh release of ROS 2, Galactic Geochelone!

Galactic Geochelone is an interim release between ROS 2 long term support (LTS) releases and will be supported until November 2022. It is the second ROS 2 release to target Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). For details on supported platforms and dependency versions, see REP 2000. The name Galactic Geochelone comes from the word, Galactic, meaning “of or relating to a galaxy” and Geochelone, a genus of endangered tortoise, more commonly called the Indian Star Tortoise. Indian Star Tortoises are often found in the pet trade and they are noted for being the inspiration for the “gömböc”, a mathematically defined three dimensional shape that can automatically return itself to an upright position. Legend has it that the developer of the gomboc actually tested thirty tortoises for their ability to automatically roll over.

T-shirts for this release were announced earlier in the week along with a post detailing all of the graphics associated with this release. You can pick up a t-shirt and download the original Galactic artwork from this discourse post. T-shirts will be on sale for at least two months and all proceeds go to fund the development of ROS.

This ROS 2 release has a number of new and exciting features that address feedback from the ROS user community. The full list of new features for this release can be found in the Galactic release page; for an exhaustive list of all changes since Foxy, see the Complete Changelog.

It’s hard to pick only a handful of items to call out, but some of the highlights are:

• Multiple logging improvements. Users can now specify per-logger log levels and configure their logging directory through environment variables. There have also been changes to rclcpp’s logging macros.
• The ability to configure quality of service (QoS) at startup.
• Improvements to the ROS 2 CLI including echoing serialized topic data, YAML data representation, and the ability to load parameter files at run time.
• A change of the default ROS Middleware Layer to Cyclone DDS -- see the TSC RMW Report for more information. (https://osrf.github.io/TSC-RMW-Reports/)
• A new time panel in RViz2.
• A new and vastly improved Connext RMW implementation.
• Vastly improved rosbag2 performance.
• A variety of improvements and refactors in rclcpp and rclpy.

In addition to the many features and bug fixes mentioned in the changelog, we’re also happy to announce the addition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 8 as a tier 2 platform for ROS 2 Galactic. Even more exciting is that Galactic features the debut of RPM packages built on the ROS 2 buildfarm for RHEL 8. This is the first release of ROS or ROS 2 that will build platform binary packages on the buildfarm in a format other than deb. They can be consumed on RHEL 8 (and RHEL clones like Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, and CentOS) in largely the same way that the deb packages for Ubuntu are consumed today.

ROS 2 is truly a community effort. We’re thrilled to share that over 500 ROS 2 packages will be available in Galactic from day 1. That’s more packages than any other ROS 2 release has had on day 1. Between Foxy and Galactic we had 195 different contributors to the packages in the ROS 2 core. Thanks to everyone who contributed:

Aaditya Saraiya, Aaron Blasdel, Ada-King, Adam Dąbrowski, Addisu Z. Taddese, Ahmed Sobhy, Alberto Soragna, Alejandro Hernández Cordero, Alex Tyshka, Alexander, Alfi Maulana, Allison Thackston, Ananya Muddukrishna, Anas Abou Allaban, Andre Nguyen, Andrea Sorbini, Andreas Klintberg, Audrow Nash, Barry Xu, Ben Wolsieffer, Bjar Ne, Bo Sun, BriceRenaudeau, CHEN, Carl Delsey, Chen Lihui, ChenYing Kuo, Chris Lalancette, Christophe Bedard, Claire Wang, Colin MacKenzie, Daisuke Sato, Dan Rose, David V. Lu!!, Dereck Wonnacott, Devin Bonnie, Dirk Thomas, DongheeYe, Eduardo Ponz Segrelles, Emerson Knapp, Enrique Fernandez, Erik Boasson, Esteve Fernandez, Evan Flynn, Felix Endres, Gary Servin, Geoffrey Biggs, Greg Balke, Gökçe Aydos, Helen Oleynikova, Homalozoa X, Hunter L. Allen, Ignacio Montesino Valle, Ingo Lütkebohle, Isaac IY Saito, Ivan Santiago Paunovic, JLBuenoLopez-eProsima, Jack O'Quin, Jacob Perron, Jafar Abdi, Jaime Martin Losa, Jaison Titus, Jannik Abbenseth, Jeremie Deray, Jesse Ikawa, Jochen Sprickerhof, Joe Speed, Johannes Meyer, John Stechschulte, Jonathan Binney, Jonathan Bohren, Jonathan Wakely, Jorge Perez, Jose Luis Rivero, Jose Tomas Lorente, Joseph Schornak, Josh Langsfeld, Joshua Whitley, José Antonio Moral, José Luis Bueno López, Karsten Knese, Kartik Mohta, Kaven Yau, Kazunari Tanaka, Kyle Fazzari, Lei Liu, Lobotuerk, Louise Poubel, Loy, Lucas Han, Lucas Walter, Lukas Bulwahn, M. Mei, Mabel Zhang, Markus Roth, Martijn Buijs, Martin Ganeff, Martin Guenther, Martin Idel, Marwan Taher, Matthijs den Toom, Matthijs van der Burgh, Max Schettler, Max Schwarz, Miaofei Mei, Michael Carroll, Michael Ferguson, Michael Grupp, Michael Jeronimo, Michel Hidalgo, Miguel Company, Mikael Arguedas, Mike Purvis, Mirza Shah, Morgan Quigley, Naveau, Nico Neumann, Nikolai Morin, P. J. Reed, Patrick Spieler, Pedro Pena, Piotr Jaroszek, Prajakta Gokhale, Ralph Lange, Rich Mattes, Ruffin, Sarthak Mittal, Scott K Logan, ScottMcMichael, Sean Yen, Sebastian Grans, Sebastian Höffner, Shane Loretz, Simon Honigmann, Stephen, Stephen Brawner, Steve Macenski, Steven! Ragnarök, Sumanth Nirmal, Sven Brinkmann, Takamasa Horibe, Ted Kern, Thibaud Chupin, Thijs Raymakers, Tomoya Fujita, Tully Foote, Tyler Weaver, Vicidel, Victor Lamoine, Victor Lopez, Vikas Dhiman, Vincent Rabaud, Víctor Mayoral Vilches, William Woodall, Yifei Zhang, Yoan Mollard, Yossi Ovcharik, Zhen Ju, ahcorde, alemme, anaelle-sw, blaise, bpwilcox, brawner, chapulina, eboasson, gerkey, goekce, hsgwa, ipa-fez, jhdcs, joshua-qnx, ksuszka, kwc, lsouchet, mauropasse, mihelich, mirzashah, pluris, pmihelich, sambrose, shonigmann, siposcsaba89, spiralray, ssumoo, straszheim, suab321321, sung-goo-kim, surfertas, tomoya, vrabaud, y-okumura-isp, ymd-stella

Galactic TurtleSim Turtle with Animation

If you would like to give Galactic a try, check out our installation instructions and tutorials. We’re excited to hear about the applications that this release will enable! If you have demonstrations using Galactic from your own work that you can share, feel free to post in this thread.

As always, we invite you to give feedback, report bugs, suggest features, and contribute code!Refer to this contact page for the best way to give feedback. We also invite you to release your ROS 2 packages in Galactic. Here’s a tutorial on how to do so. Finally, we would like to announce the name of the next ROS 2 release scheduled for May 2022:

Humble Hawksbill

Your friendly ROS 2 Team