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). That generally 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.
Below is a list of current and historic ROS 2 distributions. Rows in the table marked in green are the currently supported distributions.
.. toctree:: :hidden: Releases/Release-Iron-Irwini.rst Releases/Release-Humble-Hawksbill.rst Releases/Release-Foxy-Fitzroy.rst Releases/Release-Rolling-Ridley.rst Releases/Development.rst Releases/End-of-Life.rst Releases/Release-Process.rst.rst-content table.docutils:not(.field-list) tr:nth-child(1) td {background-color: #33cc66;} .rst-content tr:nth-child(2) {background-color: #33cc66;} .rst-content tr:nth-child(4) {background-color: #33cc66;}
For details on upcoming features see the :doc:`roadmap <The-ROS2-Project/Roadmap>`.
There is a new ROS 2 distribution released yearly on May 23rd (World Turtle Day).
| Distro | Release date | Logo | EOL date |
|---|---|---|---|
| :doc:`Jazzy Jalisco <Releases/Release-Jazzy-Jalisco>` | May 2024 | TBD | May 2029 |
:doc:`ROS 2 Rolling Ridley <Releases/Release-Rolling-Ridley>` is the rolling development distribution of ROS 2. It is described in REP 2002 and was first introduced in June 2020.
The Rolling distribution of ROS 2 serves two purposes:
- it is a staging area for future stable distributions of ROS 2, and
- it is a collection of the most recent development releases.
As the name implies, Rolling is continuously updated and can have in-place updates that include breaking changes. We recommend that most people use the most recent stable distribution instead (see :ref:`list_of_distributions`).
Packages released into the Rolling distribution will be automatically released into future stable distributions of ROS 2. :doc:`Releasing a ROS 2 package <../How-To-Guides/Releasing/Releasing-a-Package>` into the Rolling distribution follows the same procedures as all other ROS 2 distributions.