Is SMACH unmaintained?

Question

I see that the SMACH github page hasn't been updated for at least a year. Is SMACH depricated?

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Update:

And if FlexBE is considered a better alterntative for a state machine?

I'm asking since SMACH (and smach_viewer) doesn't seem to have been updated for at least a year: https://github.com/ros/executive_smach

and FlexBE was updated just 2 months ago: https://github.com/team-vigir/flexbe_behavior_engine

My project needs a state machine, but it's a very simple project when compared to running a whole robot. So we don't need anything fancy, just a simple state machine. But would prefer that it wouldn't get deprecated in a year or two.

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Originally posted by Frimann on ROS Answers with karma: 46 on 2019-07-24

Post score: 0

Answer 1

To the best of my knowledge, smach is not deprecated. And for sure, I still maintain FlexBE and develop new features from time to time. In fact, FlexBE internally relies on some smach core functionality and my experience with it is quite good. However, I cannot comment on the more specific smach functionality like smach_ros or the visualization, although I experienced problems with it when I used it a few years ago.

The main motivation for developing FlexBE was that some features where missing for us in smach. This includes for example a good visualization, a visual editor, an efficient runtime monitoring, a way for operator-robot shared autonomy, and in terms of software development, a clear structure of how to define and test re-usable state definitions. All this is addressed in FlexBE. Anyways, smach is great work and if you are confident that you only need a very simple statemachine and nothing like an editor or so, smach should be a good and sufficient choice as well.

In any case, feel free to contact me via the contact form of the FlexBE website or Github if you have feedback regarding FlexBE. :)

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Originally posted by Philipp Schillinger with karma: 321 on 2019-07-27

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by Frimann on 2019-07-29:
Thank you for the answer. Glad to hear that Smach is not depricated. I decided on starting my project in Smach since I'm running out on time. But I like to the added features you talk about, and would love to migrate my project in the future over to FlexBE. On that regard, is there anything I should keep in mind when developing my project in Smach, in order to have it easily converted to use FlexBE?