Note on deprecations

A tick-tock release cycle allows easy migration to new software versions. Obsolete code is marked as deprecated for one major release. Deprecated code produces compile-time warnings. These warning serve as notification to users that their code should be upgraded. The next major release will remove the deprecated code.

Gazebo Launch 8.X to 9.X

The gz-launch package is deprecated. See below for replacement of core features and plugins.

• Launch functionality for running Gazebo, i.e. sim_server, sim_gui, sim_factory plugins

  • ros2/launch is now recommended for launching Gazebo. The ros_gz_sim package uses ros2 launch for launching Gazebo and spawning entities. See examples in ros_gz_examples.

• Launch functionality for running executables

  • Use Python or Ruby scripts (or the programming language or your choice) directly for launching processes. Alternatively, ros2/launch also has the functionality to execute a process.

• websocket_server plugin

  • The plugin has been ported to a gz-sim system, see the websocket server tutorial in gz-sim for more informaton.

• joystick plugin

  • See the standalone joystick example in gz-sim.

• joy_to_twist plugin

  • See the standalone joys_to_twist example in gz-sim.

Other notes

• The environment variable GZ_LAUNCH_INITIAL_CONFIG_PATH is removed. Use gz::launch::getInitialConfigPath() instead.

• The environment variable GZ_LAUNCH_PLUGIN_INSTALL_PATH is removed. Use gz::launch::getPluginInstallPath() instead.

Gazebo Launch 6.X to 7.X

• Removed Ignition
  • Removed the ignition include directory.
  • Launch scripts must use the <gz> element.

Gazebo Launch 5.X to 6.X

• The ignition namespace is deprecated and will be removed in future versions. Use gz instead.

• Header files under ignition/... are deprecated and will be removed in future versions. Use gz/... instead.

• Migrate IGN_LAUNCH_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable to GZ_LAUNCH_PLUGIN_PATH for finding plugin. With tick-tock.

• Migrate IGN_LAUNCH_CONFIG_PATH environment variable to GZ_LAUNCH_CONFIG_PATH for finding configs. With tick-tock.

• The default config file path has been hard-tocked to ~/.gz/launch/gui.config. ~/.ignition/launch/gui.config will no longer work.

• The shared libraries have gz where there used to be ignition.

  • Using the un-migrated version is still possible due to tick-tocks, but will be removed in future versions.

• Launch files have been hard-tocked to the .gzlaunch extension instead of .ign.

Gazebo Launch 2.2.2

• Environment variable GZ_LAUNCH_CONFIG_PATH started to be treated as a path list (colon-separated on Linux, semicolon-separated on Windows). Before, only a single path could be set here, and setting a path list would break the whole launch file lookup functionality.

Gazebo Launch 0.X to N.M