Change package prefix to ros- or ros2-

[baszalmstra]

Why

ROS package names currently include the full ROS distribution, for example ros-humble-rclcpp. This makes project configuration specific to one distribution and means package names have to change when moving from Humble to Jazzy, even though the selected channel and distro mutex already determine which ROS distribution is installed.

Keeping the ROS major version in the name is still useful. It avoids collisions and makes it clear whether a package belongs to ROS 1 or ROS 2. The new names therefore use ros- for ROS 1 and ros2- for ROS 2, for example ros2-rclcpp.

What happens after this is merged

Nothing changes for existing Vinca configurations by default. They continue generating distro-qualified names such as ros-humble-rclcpp.

A distribution can start the migration by enabling both. Vinca will then generate the new names alongside the old names. Installing an old name will install the corresponding package under its new name, which gives downstream repositories, examples, users, and tooling time to migrate without breaking existing configurations.

Once the migration is complete, the distribution can switch to new and stop generating the old compatibility names.

What the legacy packages do

In legacy mode, distro-qualified packages remain normal packages and contain the ROS package itself, just as they do today.

In both mode, the package under the new name contains the ROS package. The distro-qualified legacy package becomes a lightweight compatibility package that depends on the same version under its new name. For example, installing ros-humble-rclcpp installs ros2-rclcpp. This preserves existing environment files and commands without building or installing two copies of RCLCPP.

In new mode, the legacy packages are no longer generated.

Configuration

Use package_name_mode in vinca.yaml to select the desired stage:

package_name_mode: both

Available values:

• legacy is the default. It preserves the current distro-qualified packages and their current behavior.
• both starts the migration. The new names contain the ROS packages, while the old names remain as compatibility packages.
• new completes the migration by generating only the new ros- or ros2- names.

Existing configurations that omit package_name_mode remain on legacy.

Closes #97

Validation

All tests and GitHub CI checks pass on Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows.

[traversaro]

Personally I would strongly prefer to also generate the old name, at least for a deprecation period, that from what I understand what was we had consensus on #97 (comment) . I really prefer to avoid breaking all existing robostack examples and existing human and llm knoledge (and I am happy to work on adding that).

[baszalmstra]

Makes sense. But then we let those point to the renamed packages instead of the other way around.

[traversaro]

Makes sense. But then we let those point to the renamed packages instead of the other way around.

Yes, sure!

[Tobias-Fischer]

@baszalmstra do you want to implement the last small changes required so we can merge here?

[baszalmstra]

@Tobias-Fischer @traversaro I implemented the changes and update the PR description to describe what happened.

[Tobias-Fischer]

LGTM, what do you think @traversaro?

[traversaro]

Thanks and sorry for the delay!