Changes in robotology-superbuild and related conda packages October 2024

[traversaro]

Hello @robotology/everyone,
in last month the robotology-superbuild saw some changes in its internal structure and the generated conda binary packages. This changes are going to be included in the upcoming release 2024.11.0, but as they are already changed the behavior of the robotology-superbuild master branch and of the latest conda packages available for robotology-superbuild-related packages, I thought it make sense to announce this.

macOS conda packages in robotology channel are now build for osx-arm64 instead of osx-64

Since October 2024, new conda packages built in the robotology channel are build for osx-arm64 instead of osx-64, as most macOS users of robotology-superbuild the mantainers are aware of are now using arm64-based macOS systems. Note that this does not apply to conda packages for libraries that are part of the robotology-superbuild, but whose conda packages are maintained by the conda-forge infrastructures, such as yarp, idyntree, bipedal-locomotion-framework and many more. For all these packages, both osx-64 and osx-arm64 packages are still built for every new release.

Related issues:

• Switch robotology conda binary packages generation to target osx-arm64 instead of osx-64 robotology-superbuild#1712

wearables merged in human-dynamics-estimation

The wearables packages has been merged in human-dynamics-estimation. All C++/CMake and python packages that were present in wearablesare now part ofhuman-dynamics-estimation, since the release 4.0.0 of human-dynamics-estimation`

Related issues:

• Merge wearables in human-dynamics-estimation? wearables#212
• Merge wearables in human-dynamics-estimation robotology-superbuild#1720

human-dynamics-estimation, icub-main and icub-firmware-shared conda packages are now available in the conda-forge channel

This means that human-dynamics-estimation, icub-main and icub-firmware-shared are ready available after each new release (without the need to wait for the weekly job that compile and upload the conda packages in the robotology channel), and they are available on all platforms supported by conda-forge:

• linux-64
• linux-aarch64
• linux-ppc64le
• win-64
• osx-64
• osx-arm64

Related issues:

• Migrate icub-firmware-shared, icub-main and human-dynamics-estimation conda packages to be installed via conda-forge robotology-superbuild#1727
• Add recipe for icub-firmware-shared packages conda-forge/staged-recipes#27675
• Add recipe for icub-main packages conda-forge/staged-recipes#27692
• Add recipe for human-dynamics-estimation packages conda-forge/staged-recipes#27723

robotology conda channel is now available with full historical packages on prefix.dev, the robotology channel on anaconda.org will just contain the latest packages

To ensure redundancy, the robotology channel since October 2024 available on two servers:

• prefix.dev
• anaconda.org

The full history of packages is available on the prefix.dev mirror, so if you aim for reproducibility, try to use the prefix.dev mirror by specifying the channel via -c https://repo.prefix.dev/robotology in place of just -c robotology. On the anaconda.org, some packages built before 1st of January 2023 are not available, so if you only care for the latest packages, you can still install packages by simply passing -c robotology to conda or pixi.

Related issues:

• Document the new prefix.dev robotology channel mirror and upload new robotology conda packages to both anaconda.org and prefix.dev robotology-superbuild#1716