ROS 2 FOXY FITZROY RELEASE
Two weeks ago we announced the release ROS Noetic Ninjemys, the final official release of ROS 1. This week we are proud to announce the release of ROS 2, Foxy Fitzroy. Foxy is a major milestone in ROS 2 development, and is the first ROS 2 release with a three-year long term support window. The name Foxy Fitzroy references the Fitzroy River Turtle, Rheodytes leukops, which is endemic to the Fitzroy River in Queensland, Australia. The “foxy” adjective describes something that is cunning and shrewd, like how foxes are depicted in many cultures around the world.
ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy is built on top Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) and with a three-year support horizon and is a great choice for those who are either starting a new ROS project, or are looking to move their ROS 1 project to ROS 2. This release includes tier 1 support for Windows 10, MacOS Mojave, and Ubuntu 20.04 on both ARM64 and AMD64. Full information about operating system support can be found in REP-2000. Foxy comes with a number of bux fixes, improvements, and feature additions all of which can be found in the detailed release notes. A few new features of note include:
Multiple new beginner tutorials. Check them out!
Performance improvements for rmw_fastrtps_cpp and rmw_cyclonedds_cpp. For details, refer to this design document about node to participant mapping.
Several core packages are now considered stable, including rclcpp and common interfaces.
rosbag2 support for compressing and splitting bags
New C++ API:
If you are coming to ROS 2 from ROS 1, or just learning about ROS 2, we have a variety of tutorials that you can find in the ROS 2 documentation along with installation instructions. The ROS 2 command line interface differs slightly from ROS 1, but the syntax is more regular and all of the functionality is documented in the help command. If you would like to take Foxy for a spin without installing it you can find a pre-installed docker container in this repository. If you happen to run across any bugs or issues while trying out Foxy please use our contact page to route your message to the correct recipient. If you are a package maintainer or developer you can find detailed information about upgrading and releasing your package using Bloom.
We would like to thank all of the community members and contributors who have made this release a success. Without you ROS wouldn’t be the success it is today. If you would like to show off your Foxy pride and help support Open Robotics you can still purchase ROS t-shirts and other swag are available until June 15th.