Updating the ROS 2 roadmap (take 2) (ros2#829)

* Renamed source/Roadmap.rst to source/Feature-Ideas.rst

Updated Feature-Ideas.rst and added it to the index.rst file
Add in links to tracking tickets.

Signed-off-by: Nate Koenig <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Chris Lalancette <[email protected]>

Author: nkoenig

source/Feature-Ideas.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,186 @@
+.. _FeatureIdeas:
+
+Feature Ideas
+=============
+
+.. contents:: Table of Contents
+   :depth: 2
+   :local:
+
+The following are feature ideas in no specific order.
+This list contains features that we think are important and can make for good contributions to ROS 2.
+:ref:`Please get in touch with us <Help>` before digging to a new feature.
+We can offer guidance, and connect you with other developers.
+
+Design / Concept
+----------------
+
+* IDL format
+
+  * Leverage new features like grouping constants into enums
+  * Extend usage to ``.idl`` files with just constants and/or declare parameters with ranges
+  * Revisit constraints of IDL interface naming, see `ros2/design#220 <https://github.com/ros2/design/pull/220>`_
+
+* Create migration plan for ROS 1 -> ROS 2 transition
+* Uniqueness of node names, see `ros2/design#187 <https://github.com/ros2/design/issues/187>`_
+* Specific "API" of a node in terms of topics / services / etc. in a descriptive format, see `ros2/design#266 <https://github.com/ros2/design/pull/266>`_
+* Configuring QoS at runtime, see `ros2/design#280 <https://github.com/ros2/design/issues/280>`_
+
+Infrastructure and tools
+------------------------
+
+* Building
+
+  * Consolidate build.ros2.org and ci.ros2.org
+  * Provision macOS
+  * Windows and Mac OS packages
+  * Support profiles in ``colcon``
+
+* Documentation
+
+  * Improve documentation platform
+  * Support for ``doc`` jobs on the `ROS 2 buildfarm <https://build.ros2.org>`__
+  * Consider consolidating with design.ros2.org
+  * Provide three different kinds of content:
+
+    * "demos" to show features and cover them with tests
+    * "examples" to show a simple/minimalistic usage which might have multiple ways to do something
+    * "tutorials" which contain more comments and anchors for the wiki (teaching one recommended way)
+
+New features
+------------
+
+The trailing stars indicate the rough effort: 1 star for small, 2 stars for medium, 3 stars for large.
+
+
+* Logging improvements [\* / \*\*]
+
+  * Configuration specified in a file
+  * Per-logger configuration (enabling e.g. ``rqt_logger_level``)
+
+* Time related
+
+  * Support rate and sleep based on clock
+
+* Parameters
+
+  * enforce type
+
+* Additional Graph API features [\*\* / \*\*\*]
+
+  * Introspect QoS setting for all (especially remote) topics
+  * a la ROS 1 Master API: https://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Master_API
+  * Event-based notification
+  * Requires knowledge of the rmw interface which needs to be extended
+
+* Executor
+
+  * Performance improvements (mostly around the waitset)
+  * Deterministic ordering (fair scheduling)
+  * Work with callback groups
+  * Decouple waitables
+
+* Message generation
+
+  * Catch-up message generation for languages not supported out-of-the-box
+  * Mangle field names in message to avoid language specific keywords
+  * Improve generator performance by running them in the same Python interpreter
+
+* Launch
+
+  * Support use case of using ``xacro`` to perform substitutions before passing the result containing parameters
+  * Use pytest for launch testing
+  * Support for launching multi-node executables (i.e. manual composition)
+  * Extend launch XML/YAML support: events and event handlers, tag namespaces and aliasing
+
+* Rosbag
+
+  * Support recording services (and actions)
+
+* ros1_bridge
+
+  * Support bridging actions
+
+* RMW configuration
+
+  * Unified standard way of configuring the middleware
+
+* Remapping [\*\* / \*\*\*]
+
+  * Dynamic remapping and aliasing through a Service interface
+
+* Type masquerading [\*\*\*]
+
+  * a la ROS 1's message traits: https://wiki.ros.org/roscpp/Overview/MessagesSerializationAndAdaptingTypes
+  * Requires knowledge of the typesupport system
+
+* Expand on real-time safety [\*\*\*]
+
+  * For services, clients, and parameters
+  * Expose more quality of service parameters related to real-time performance
+  * Real-time-safe intra-process messaging
+
+* Multi-robot supporting features and demos [\*\*\*]
+
+  * Undesired that all nodes across all robots share the same domain (and discover each other)
+  * Design how to “partition” the system
+
+* Implement C client library ``rclc`` [\*\*]
+* Support more DDS / RTPS implementations:
+
+  * Connext 6, see `ros2/rmw_connext#375 <https://github.com/ros2/rmw_connext/issues/375>`_
+  * Connext dynamic [\*]
+  * RTI's micro implementation [\*]
+
+* security improvements:
+
+  * more granularity in security configuration (allow authentication only, authentication and encryption, etc.) [\*]
+  * integrate DDS-Security logging plugin (unified way to aggregate security events and report them to the users through a ROS interface) [\*\*]
+  * key storage security (right now, keys are just stored in the filesystem) [\*\*]
+  * more user friendly interface (make it easier to specify security config). Maybe a Qt GUI? This GUI could also assist in distributing keys somehow. [\*\*\*]
+  * A way to say "please secure this running system" with some UI that would auto-generate keys and policies for everything that is currently running. [\*\*\*]
+  * If there are hardware-specific features for securing keys or accelerating encryption/signing messages, that could be interesting to add to DDS/RTPS implementations that don't use it already. [\*\*\*]
+
+Port of existing ROS 1 functionality
+------------------------------------
+
+* Perception metapackage
+
+  * Perception PCL
+
+* MoveIt
+
+  * MoveIt Maintainers are tracking: https://discourse.ros.org/t/moveit-maintainer-meeting-recap-july-25th-2018/5504
+
+* RQt
+
+  * convert more plugins [\* each when dependencies are available]
+
+Reducing Technical Debt
+-----------------------
+
+* Extend testing and resolve bugs in the current code base
+
+  * Waitset inconsistency
+  * Multi-threading problems with components
+
+* Fix flaky tests.
+* Ability to run (all) unit tests with tools e.g. valgrind
+* API review, specifically user-facing APIs in rclcpp and rclpy
+* Refactor the rclcpp API into separate packages focused on a single aspect, rclcpp should afterward still provide the combined user-facing API
+* Revisit message allocators, consider using std::polymorphic_allocator to address problems
+
+* Modernization
+
+  * Support/use exporting CMake targets (rather than using CMake variables like ``*_INCLUDE_DIRS``, ``*_LIBRARIES``)
+  * Use C++17 filesystem features rather than custom code
+  * Use pybind11 for rclpy
+  * Move to f-strings in Python code
+  * Use setup.cfg files for Python packages
+
+* Synchronize / reconcile design docs with the implementation.
+
+  * Pre-release retrospective review (APIs, docs, etc.)
+
+* Address / classify pending tickets
+* Address TODOs in code / docs