Proposal: migrate from separate channels for each distro to one channel for all distro

[traversaro]

Follow up of the discussion in RoboStack/vinca#97 (comment) .

[traversaro]

In RoboStack/vinca#97 (comment) @baszalmstra wrote:

Slightly better user experience. Just add robostack and be done.

I am not sure about that. Assuming that we start using common names across ROS 2 distros as discussed in RoboStack/vinca#97, a minimal multi distro would with multiple packages would be:

[workspace]
name = "robostack-example"
description = "Development environment for RoboStack ROS packages"
channels = ["https://prefix.dev/conda-forge"]
platforms = ["linux-64", "win-64", "osx-64", "osx-arm64", "linux-aarch64"]

[environments]
humble = { features = ["humble"] }
jazzy = { features = ["jazzy"] }
kilted = { features = ["kilted"] }

[dependencies]
ros-core = "*"

[feature.humble]
channels = ["https://prefix.dev/robostack-humble"]

[feature.jazzy]
channels = ["https://prefix.dev/robostack-jazzy"]

[feature.kilted]
channels = ["https://prefix.dev/robostack-kilted"]

while with a single unified channel it would be:

[workspace]
name = "robostack-example"
description = "Development environment for RoboStack ROS packages"
channels = ["https://prefix.dev/conda-forge"]
platforms = ["linux-64", "win-64", "osx-64", "osx-arm64", "linux-aarch64"]

[environments]
humble = { features = ["humble"] }
jazzy = { features = ["jazzy"] }
kilted = { features = ["kilted"] }

[dependencies]
ros-core = "*"

[feature.humble.dependencies]
ros-distro-humble = "*"

[feature.jazzy.dependencies]
ros-distro-jazzy= "*"

[feature.kilted.dependencies]
ros-distro-kilted= "*"

@baszalmstra I am probably missing something in your proposal, but it seems to me that in both cases the lines complexity of the example is exactly the same?

[baszalmstra]

Yeah, I agree. Lets close this discussion.

[traversaro]

Yeah, I agree. Lets close this discussion.

Ah cool. Yes unless somebody has other opinions I think separate channels have also the following advantage:

• smaller repodata
• minimize the risk of distro cross-talking (for example if there are errors)
• staying inside anaconda.org limits

If somebody has some other opinion, feel free to comment!