Foxy Fitzroy ROS 2 release reaches end of life

ROS 2 release Foxy Fitzroy was released on June 5, 2020. Foxy was a major milestone in ROS 2 development and was the first ROS 2 release with a three-year long-term support window. The name Foxy Fitzroy references the Fitzroy River Turtle, Rheodytes leukops, which is endemic to the Fitzroy River in Queensland, Australia. The “foxy” adjective describes something that is cunning and shrewd, like how foxes are depicted in many cultures around the world.

ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy was built on top Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) and was a starting point for many developers moving their ROS 1 project to ROS 2. The release also includes a new C++ API with features for static executor performance improvements, topic performance statistics and WaitSet class as an alternative to executors.

As the ROS community prepares for the new release Iron Irwini, it also brings an end to the long-term support (LTS) release Foxy Fitzroy. If you’re a package maintainer, you are encouraged to keep your packages up to date and add the latest releases to rosdistro. Similarly, if you see any major blocking issues, please file a report or preferably submit a quick fix for it.

The final patch release and sync will be in mid-June, meaning that all patches/package updates need to be completed by the first week of June.