distro-compat

ROS 2 Distro Compatibility Cheat Sheet

Supported Distros (2026)

Distro	Status	EOL
Humble	✅ Active LTS	May 2027
Iron	❌ EOL	Nov 2024
Jazzy	✅ Active LTS	May 2029
Kilted	✅ Active	Nov 2026
Rolling	🔄 Dev	ongoing

Key API Differences

Only in Jazzy+

• rclcpp::executors::EventsExecutor
• moveit_configs_utils.MoveItConfigsBuilder (actually Iron+)
• MoveItPy Python bindings (Iron+)
• Service introspection (ServiceIntrospectionState)
• Zenoh RMW (rmw_zenoh_cpp)
• Nav2 Docking Server (DockRobot action)
• Groot2 BT monitoring

Only in Kilted+

• Nav2 Route Server
• generate_parameter_library widely adopted

In All Supported Distros (Humble+)

• rclpy, rclcpp core APIs
• rclcpp_lifecycle
• nav2_simple_commander
• ros2_control
• SLAM Toolbox, Nav2, AMCL
• rclcpp::QoS, SensorDataQoS
• tf2_ros full API

Check Your Target Distro

# What distro is installed?
echo $ROS_DISTRO

# What distro does this package target?
cat CLAUDE.md | grep ROS_DISTRO

Conditional Compilation (C++)

#include <rclcpp/rclcpp.hpp>

#if RCLCPP_VERSION_GTE(21, 0, 0)  // Jazzy+
  // Use new API
#else
  // Use Humble-compatible API
#endif

Conditional Import (Python)

import rclpy
from packaging import version

if version.parse(rclpy.__version__) >= version.parse('3.3.0'):
    # Jazzy+ feature
    pass
else:
    # Humble fallback
    pass