Adding new build type

[lelongg]

I'm wondering if ROS support for new build types (let's say Cargo builds for Rust support) should be added to this repository or to a new one (colcon-ros-cargo?).

[dirk-thomas]

This package currently doesn't contain any of the actual build / test logic. I only dispatches (based on the package build type) to an extension provided by other packages (e.g. CMake or Python).

For Cargo that could be done the same. If colcon-cargo provides the extensions for actually doing the building / testing packages using cargo then based on the build type this package could invoke those extensions - optionally with ROS specific arguments.

[lelongg]

Understood, this has been done in #25

[dirk-thomas]

#31 refactored the code in this package and uses extensions for each build type. That enables to contribute support for other build types from any Python package (rather than requiring changing this package. Please see the changes in the referenced PR for examples how that is done.

With this in place I would suggest to provide support for other build types through separate packages (rather than this package). One advantage is that the maintainer of that package has full control when / how to release changes. Also this package is also available as a Debian package (beside PyPI) so all dependencies need to also provide Debian packages which is not always feasible (since the ROS apt repositories require permission to push new Debian packages which can't easily be granted to more people 😟).

[dirk-thomas]

I will go ahead and close this ticket since the original question seem to have been answered. Please feel free to comment on the closed ticket.