Contents
See Also:
Distributions (this page)
What is a Distribution?
A ROS distribution is a versioned set of ROS packages. These are akin to Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu). The purpose of the ROS distributions is to let developers work against a relatively stable codebase until they are ready to roll everything forward. Therefore once a distribution is released, we try to limit changes to bug fixes and non-breaking improvements for the core packages (every thing under ros-desktop-full). And generally that applies to the whole community, but for "higher" level packages, the rules are less strict, and so it falls to the maintainers of a given package to avoid breaking changes.
We capture the components that make up a distribution in our rosdistro format and it allows for multiple distributions. There are many different types of robots with different needs, and we anticipate that parts of the community may put together their own distributions in the future to better target these platforms.
List of Distributions
Distro |
Release date |
Poster |
Tuturtle, turtle in tutorial |
EOL date |
ROS Noetic Ninjemys |
May 23rd, 2020 |
May, 2025 |
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May 23rd, 2018 |
June 27, 2023 |
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May 23rd, 2017 |
May, 2019 |
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May 23rd, 2016 |
April, 2021 |
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May 23rd, 2015 |
May, 2017 |
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July 22nd, 2014 |
April, 2019 |
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September 4th, 2013 |
May, 2015 |
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December 31, 2012 |
|
July, 2014 |
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April 23, 2012 |
|
-- |
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August 30, 2011 |
|
-- |
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March 2, 2011 |
|
-- |
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August 2, 2010 |
|
-- |
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March 2, 2010 |
|
-- |
Legend
- light yellow: future release
- green: supported release
- grey: unsupported release (End of Life)
Distribution Details
The details on the distributions and versions of common dependencies and other considerations, see the official Target Platforms REP:
Release Schedule
Release rules
- ROS release timing is based on need and available resources
- All future ROS 1 releases are LTS, supported for five years
- ROS releases will drop support for EOL Ubuntu distributions, even if the ROS release is still supported.
Side effects of the release policy:
- Every ROS release will be supported on exactly one Ubuntu LTS.
- LTS releases will not share a common Ubuntu release with any previous releases.
- ROS releases will not add support for new Ubuntu distributions after their release date.
These simplified rules and side effects are subject to change with changes to the underlying Ubuntu release policy.
For more details see the official Release Policy.
Upcoming releases
Noeitc Ninjemys is the final release of ROS 1 by Open Robotics. Future ROS releases will all be based on ROS 2, and are listed on docs.ros.org page.
Which distribution to use
A rather arbitrary list of usecase driven recommendations. Updated on May 2020.