This document is a declaration of software quality for eprosima Fast DDS inspired on the guidelines provided in the ROS 2 REP-2004 document.
eprosima Fast DDS (formerly Fast RTPS) is a C++ implementation of the DDS (Data Distribution Service) standard of the OMG (Object Management Group). eProsima Fast DDS implements the RTPS (Real Time Publish Subscribe) protocol, which provides publisher-subscriber communications over unreliable transports such as UDP, as defined and maintained by the Object Management Group (OMG) consortium.
eprosima Fast DDS claims to be in the Quality Level 1 category.
Below are the rationales, notes and caveats for this claim, organized by the requirements listed in the Package Requirements for Quality Level 1 in REP-2004.
The Versioning Policy Declaration for eprosima Fast DDS can be found here and it adheres to semver.
eprosima Fast DDS is at a stable version, i.e. >=1.0.0.
The latest version can be found here and its change history can be found here.
eprosima Fast DDS documentation is hosted on Read the Docs. The documentation includes the API Reference.
eprosima Fast DDS will only break public API between major releases.
Any ABI break in eprosima Fast DDS will be done between minor versions and it should be clearly stated on the release notes.
The stability of eprosima Fast DDS is ensured through review, CI and tests. The change control process can be found in CONTRIBUTING.
All changes to eprosima Fast DDS occur through pull requests that are required to pass all CI tests. In case of failure, only maintainers can merge the pull request, and only when there is enough evidence that the failure is unrelated to the change. Additionally, all pull requests must have a positive review from one other contributor that did not author the pull request.
All changes will occur through a pull request.
eprosima Fast DDS uses the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) as its confirmation of contributor origin policy. More information can be found in CONTRIBUTING
All pull requests will be peer-reviewed by at least one other contributor who did not author the pull request. Approval is required before merging.
All pull requests must pass CI to be considered for merging, unless maintainers consider that there is enough evidence that the failure is unrelated to the changes. CI testing is automatically triggered by incoming pull requests. Current nightly results can be seen here for all supported platforms:
- Linux
- Linux-aarch64
- Windows
- Mac
All pull requests must resolve related documentation changes before merging as stated in CONTRIBUTING.
eprosima Fast DDS has a documented feature list hosted in Read the Docs.
eprosima Fast DDS includes a complete API Reference which is hosted in Read the Docs.
The license for eprosima Fast DDS is Apache 2.0, and a summary can be found in each source file. A full copy of the license can be found here.
There is some third-party content included with eprosima Fast DDS which is distributed under the Boost Software License version 1.0 and Zlib license.
eprosima Fast DDS copyright holder provide a statement of copyright in each source file.
Each feature in eprosima Fast DDS has corresponding tests which simulate typical usage, and they are located in the test directory.
New features are required to have tests before being added as stated in CONTRIBUTING.
Current nightly results can be found here:
- Linux
- Linux-aarch64
- Windows
- Mac
Each part of the public API has tests, and new additions or changes to the public API require tests before being added. The tests aim to cover typical usage. Currently, efforts are being made to improve our code coverage statistics in order to test corner cases.
- All contributions to Fast DDS must increase (or at least keep) current line coverage. This is done to ensure that the 95% line coverage goal is eventually met.
- Line coverage regressions are only permitted if properly justified and accepted by maintainers.
- If the CI system reports a coverage regression after a pull request has been merged, the maintainers must study the case and decide how to proceed, mostly reverting the changes and asking for a more thorough testing of the committed changes.
- External dependencies are excluded from the coverage report.
- Fast DDS examples are excluded from the coverage report.
- This policy is enforced through the nightly Fast DDS coverage CI job.
As stated in CONTRIBUTING.md, developers and contributors are asked to run a line coverage assessment locally before submitting a PR.
eprosima Fast DDS provides a test directory specifically dedicated to performance that can be found here. Performace tests are automatically run after merging to the master branch of the project. If there has been any performance regression a notification is issued to maintainers that will study and decide how to proceed.
Latest latency performance test results can be accesed here and latest throughput performance test results can be seen here.
Furthermore, eprosima benchmarking project provides tools to run performance tests and a methodology to analyze and present the results:
eprosima Fast DDS has a code style that is enforced using uncrustify. Among the CI tests there are tests that ensures that every pull request is compliant with the code style. The latest pull request results can be seen here. The tests only check files where changes have been made. Therefore, the code style is only enforced in some files. However, the tendency will be to homogenize the older source files to the code style.
eprosima Fast DDS uses Synopsis Coverity static code analysis and the latest results can be found here.
eprosima Fast DDS depends on the following packages:
libasio-devlibtinyxml2-devfast-cdrfoonathan_memory
The first two dependencies are suggested to be installed for Linux using apt package manager, which would pull them from the Debian upstream. Therefore, these dependencies can be considered Quality Level 1 following the advantages of being packaged for Debian.
eProsima Fast CDR Quality Declaration can be found here. Currently, eProsima Fast CDR claims to be in the Quality Level 1 category.
foonathan_memory Quality Declaration can be found here.
This declaration claims that, even though foonathan_memory does not meet several quality requirements, it is considered to fulfill the Quality Level 1 requirements for its use within eprosima Fast DDS with the caveats explained in the declaration.
eprosima Fast DDS supports the following platforms and tests each change against all of them as can be seen in the current nightly results:
- Linux
- Linux-aarch64
- Windows
- Mac
More information about the supported platforms can be found in PLATFORM_SUPPORT
eprosima Fast DDS vulnerability Disclosure Policy can be found here
The chart below compares the requirements in the REP-2004 with the current state of eprosima Fast DDS
| Number | Requirement | Current State |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Version policy | --- |
| 1.i | Version Policy available | ✓ |
| 1.ii | Stable version | ✓ |
| 1.iii | Declared public API | ✓ |
| 1.iv | API stability policy | ✓ |
| 1.v | ABI stability policy | ✓ |
| 2 | Change control process | --- |
| 2.i | All changes occur on change request | ✓ |
| 2.ii | Contributor origin (DCO, CLA, etc) | ✓ |
| 2.iii | Peer review policy | ✓ |
| 2.iv | CI policy for change requests | ✓ |
| 2.v | Documentation policy for change requests | ✓ |
| 3 | Documentation | --- |
| 3.i | Per feature documentation | ✓ |
| 3.ii | Per public API item documentation | ✓ |
| 3.iii | Declared License(s) | ✓ |
| 3.iv | Copyright in source files | ✓ |
| 3.v.a | Quality declaration linked to README | ✓ |
| 3.v.b | Centralized declaration available for peer review | ✓ |
| 4 | Testing | --- |
| 4.i | Feature items tests | ✓ |
| 4.ii | Public API tests | ✓ |
| 4.iii.a | Using coverage | ✓ |
| 4.iii.b | Coverage policy | ✓ |
| 4.iv.a | Performance tests (if applicable) | ✓ |
| 4.iv.b | Performance tests policy | ✓ |
| 4.v.a | Code style enforcement (linters) | ✓ |
| 4.v.b | Use of static analysis tools | ✓ |
| 5 | Dependencies | --- |
| 5.iii | Justifies quality use of dependencies | ✓ |
| 6 | Platform support | --- |
| 6.i | Support targets Tier1 ROS platforms | ✓ |
| 7 | Security | --- |
| 7.i | Vulnerability Disclosure Policy | ✓ |