Changes to git branch policy in YARP/YCM

[PeterBowman]

Changes to git branch policy in YARP/YCM force us to rethink the way we test our software against robotology components: https://github.com/robotology/QA/issues/372.

Fast recap:

• devel branches will disappear at some point, currently they are fast-forwarding the master branch
• all experimental development leading to the next major/minor release is now merged into master
• new stable branches per minor release, e.g. yarp-3.3 for the whole release train of YARP v3.3.x
• I presume tags will continue being produced per patch release, e.g. tags/v3.3.0

Disclaimer (announcement-like, cc @roboticslab-uc3m): it is encouraged to checkout a stable branch upon git clone of either YARP or YCM, e.g.:

• git clone https://github.com/robotology/yarp; cd yarp; git checkout yarp-3.3, or
• git clone --branch=yarp-3.3 https://github.com/robotology/yarp.

Consequences regarding Travis CI:

• https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/questions-and-answers/issues/17: our cron jobs need to address YARP/YCM master branch instead of devel
• https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/questions-and-answers/issues/48: the job matrix should now target the new minor release branches, therefore we'll no longer pull older YARP releases from the GitHub archive but directly clone the specific branch instead (mind https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/questions-and-answers/issues/86)

On a side note, perhaps we should be slowly moving towards GitHub Actions, provided this might eventually replace Travis CI (I'm not sure about it).

[PeterBowman]

Weekly cron jobs on YARP/YCM devel are now disabled. I have temporarily switched off all crons on superbuild repos, too, for the same reason (they consume YARP master).

[PeterBowman]

BTW

• all master/yarp-3.3 builds will fail inevitably due to a Clang bug: https://github.com/robotology/yarp/issues/2086
• both YCM and YARP (which consumes YCM) now require CMake 3.12+, see https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/questions-and-answers/issues/84#issuecomment-561341909
• latest OpenRAVE release introduced a regression: https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/installation-guides/issues/65#issuecomment-544455403.

[jgvictores]

• git clone --branch=yarp-3.3 https://github.com/robotology/yarp.

Added at https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/installation-guides/commit/ea11b4f088ccf0f7ceeb06e3f364e8d2242ef4dd

• both YCM and YARP (which consumes YCM) now require CMake 3.12+, see #84 (comment)

Added at https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/installation-guides/commit/be2f5f5cf6b22a8aab88ef64eb4572d063d8b6a9 and https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/installation-guides/commit/da0a2d13d0c8715c95bc5a695cbf91a259cd740d

[PeterBowman]

On a side note, perhaps we should be slowly moving towards GitHub Actions, provided this might eventually replace Travis CI (I'm not sure about it).

Robotology folks have mastered GH Actions in the robotology-superbuild repo, see .github/workflows/ci.yml and /actions. I see full support for builds on Ubuntu+macOS+Windows, which is very nice.

[PeterBowman]

BTW

All TEO PC's are now running latest CMake from Kitware's apt repository and YCM v0.11 + YARP v3.3. Also, I have upgraded the PeakCAN driver&lib combo to version 8.9.3 (latest).

[PeterBowman]

https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/kinematics-dynamics/compare/4b1f60d...ee572ce

[PeterBowman]

Changes:

• all Travis builds request Bionic images, now
• git-cache-dependency.sh script was updated
• no longer testing devel branches on weekly cron jobs, using master instead
• push jobs fetch and cache last two YARP release branches, currently yarp-3.3 and yarp-3.2, and latest YCM release (ycm-0.11 ATOW)
• superbuild repos run weekly crons on develop unless there has been another build in the last 24h

Drawbacks: the vision repo fails to compile due to a weird preprocessor error (build).

[PeterBowman]

Drawbacks: the vision repo fails to compile due to a weird preprocessor error (build).

Fixed at https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/vision/commit/37ce63dce91670716cac5c687ae08040214149fd.