Snapcraft ROS plugins should be using catkin_pkg instead of fetching all deps with rosdep
Metadata
Current evaluation
Closed as stale without implementation; maintainer ~mr-cal closed it on 2026-07-24 after the ROS 1 plugin proposal remained dormant.
Resolution: closed stale
Reason: Maintainer ~mr-cal explicitly closed the issue as stale, with no Snapcraft implementation or resolving merge. A prior comment limited scope to ROS plugins V1 and identified ros-infrastructure/rosdep#789 only as a possible upstream fix.
Evaluated by: mr-cal-bot
No scores available.
Issue body
rosdep can't discriminate between build-time and run-time dependencies. As a result, ROS snaps include build dependencies when they don't need to, thus making them larger than necessary. Snapcraft should be using catkin_pkg to manually pull dependencies out of each package.xml.
Evaluation history
| Date | Model | Scores | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed stale | Closed as stale without implementation; maintainer ~mr-cal closed it on 2026-07-24 after the ROS 1 plugin proposal remained dormant. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed stale | Closed as stale after about 6.5 years; no Snapcraft fix was made for ROS plugin V1, and no implementing PR or commit was identified. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed stale | Closed as stale in July 2026 without implementation; the ROS 1 catkin_pkg proposal remained dormant, while rosdep PR #789 was only a possible upstream fix. | |
| stealth/space-bunny-alpha | — | closed stale | Closed without implementation; the long-dormant proposal to replace rosdep with catkin_pkg for dependency resolution was abandoned. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 | — | — | Closed without implementation. The proposal to replace rosdep with catkin_pkg for precise dependency parsing in Snapcraft ROS plugins was abandoned due to lack of activity. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
60
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
5
|
close stale | Request to replace rosdep with catkin_pkg in Snapcraft's ROS plugin for finer dependency control and smaller snaps. Open for 6+ years with no maintainer feedback or labels. | |
| qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
65
Confidence:
90
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Snapcraft ROS plugins use rosdep to fetch all dependencies, increasing snap size. Suggests switching to catkin_pkg to parse package.xml for build vs runtime deps. Untriaged, inactive for over 5 years. | |
| qwen3.6-35b-a3b-mtp-q6 |
Staleness:
95
Complexity:
45
Confidence:
85
Support Request:
10
|
close stale | Suggests replacing rosdep with catkin_pkg in Snapcraft ROS plugins to reduce snap size by separating build and runtime dependencies. Unaddressed for over six years with no maintainer interaction. |
Update history
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| created |
Related work
-
Related To:
rosdep#789
(confidence 95%)
Cited in the issue as a pending upstream change likely to address dependency discrimination.
Related issues
| Issue | Project | State | Summary | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #163 Catkin plugin: use rosdep for dependency resolution | snapcraft | merged | Merged in PR #163 (commit 87b2e24f6), replacing manual Catkin package.xml dependency parsing with rosdep; PR #183 backported the change to Snapcraft 1.x. | |
| #1805581 snapcraft fail | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | User-reported catkin plugin failure ("Unable to find Catkin package roscpp_tutorials") on snapcraft 2.43.1. Closed stale by ~mr-cal on 2026-10-02; no fix was made. | |
| #1392 catkin plugin: extract rosdep into new package | snapcraft | merged | Merged in canonical/snapcraft#1392 (99218f59d), extracting rosdep from Catkin into internal.pullers and resolving #1464. | |
| #1548404 Catkin plugin: Can't handle rosdep resolving to multiple packages | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Fixed by ubuntu-core/snapcraft PR #331 (commit 1c1119ce3, 'Catkin plugin: Handle rosdep empty and multiple dependencies'), merged as e3a2b9d03; maintainer ~kyrofa linked the PR when closing the Launchpad bug. | |
| #331 Catkin plugin: Handle rosdep empty and multiple dependencies. | snapcraft | merged | PR #331 merged into snapcraft master as commit 1c1119ce3 (merge e3a2b9d03). It refactored the Catkin plugin's rosdep dependency resolution to handle empty output and multiple packages per line, fixing LP bugs #1548406 and #1548404. | |
| #1683036 Catkin plugin doesn't support rosdep dependencies that resolve to pip | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Catkin support for rosdep dependencies resolving to pip was merged in snapcraft PR #1581, commit 186ae7f91. | |
| #1548406 Catkin plugin: Can't handle rosdep resolving to nothing | snapcraft (launchpad) | closed | Fixed by canonical/snapcraft#331, merged as commit 1c1119ce3; Catkin now treats empty rosdep output as no dependencies instead of an error. |