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Roadmap

Feature work, numbered so commits, tests and the CHANGELOG can refer to an item (ROADMAP R5). The numbers are not priority order. Defects are tracked in KNOWN_ISSUES.md.

R1. Expected-rate spec and alerting (done, 0.2.0)

ROS_TOPIC_STATS_EXPECTED names a spec file (a documented YAML subset, no YAML library in the probe). Each flush window is checked against it and violations are written as WARN TOPIC / WARN NODE lines, with the first window and the atexit window skipped. pulse-check re-derives the verdict from a log with no ROS installed and exits 0/1/2. See README, "Expected-rate alerting".

Open: a for: N debounce so a rule fires only after N consecutive bad windows (R1.1).

R2. Timer liveness (rescoped, not started)

The original idea was per-timer rate monitoring pitched at control loops. The common ROS 2 control loops (ros2_control, Nav2, MoveIt Servo) do not run on rclcpp timers, so the timer tracepoints cannot see them; R5 covers their stalls through the topics they publish. What remains of R2 is liveness for nodes that have timers but no topic traffic, which today read as quiet. It ships only if R5 turns out not to cover the need.

R3. Distro matrix (done, 0.2.0 and 0.3.0)

Blocking CI on ros:humble, ros:jazzy and ros:kilted, a non-blocking rolling lane, the rclcpp_intra_publish hook for publish-side intra-process rates on Iron and newer, and the LTTng coexistence test on distros whose tracetools link lttng-ust.

R4. Positioning docs (done)

ALTERNATIVES.md covers CARET (same hook mechanism, different goal), diagnostic_updater, rclpy limits and the per-distro tracing situation.

R5. Gap and jitter visibility (done, 0.3.0)

A windowed mean cannot see a stall: at 50 Hz with min_hz: 45 and a 5 s window the rule only fires after more than half a second of dead time. ROS_TOPIC_STATS_JITTER=1 records the largest inter-arrival gap per endpoint and side, max_gap_ms rules bound it, and pulse-check gates on it. Measured cost: +24 ns per message on x86-64, +51 ns on a Jetson AGX Orin (test/orin/RESULTS.md).

R6. Output and ecosystem

  • ROS_TOPIC_STATS_FORMAT=jsonl, one object per window: done (0.3.0).
  • ROS_TOPIC_STATS_QUIET=1 banner suppression: done (0.3.0).
  • RMW support matrix (FastDDS, CycloneDDS with and without iceoryx, Zenoh): done (0.3.0).
  • Callback names via rclcpp_callback_register, for readable labels: open.
  • An opt-in Prometheus/OpenTelemetry exporter that reads the log as a sidecar, so the probe itself stays network-free: open.
  • apt packages through bloom/rosdistro for humble, jazzy and kilted: open.