# Gazebo PMC Meeting Minutes 2026-09-14

**URL:** <https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/gazebo-pmc-meeting-minutes-2026-09-14/58127>\
**Category:** Gazebo PMC\
**Tags:** gazebo, meeting, pmc\
**Created:** [September 14, 2026, 9:39pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/gazebo-pmc-meeting-minutes-2026-09-14/58127 "2026-09-14T21:39:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![azeey](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/discourse.openrobotics.org/azeey/32/6795_2.png) [@azeey](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/u/azeey)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2026, 9:39pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/gazebo-pmc-meeting-minutes-2026-09-14/58127/1 "2026-09-14T21:39:40Z")

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Hi Gazebo Community!

We didn’t have a meeting last week (2026-09-07T00:00:00Z) because it was a US holiday and most people couldn’t attend.

This week’s meeting was held on 2026-09-14T18:00:00Z and the following is a summary:

## PMC Business

- **REP-158 Vote** : A call for vote has been issued to move REP-158 (OpenUSD conventions for robotics) from Draft to Approved. Advancing the proposal requires a 50% approval quorum across both the ROS and Gazebo PMCs, with a simple majority determining the outcome. An asynchronous vote is scheduled to conclude by Friday, 2026-09-18T00:00:00Z, ahead of ROSCon.

## New agenda items

- **Evaluation of Assimp Model Loader in gz-common** : Discussed replacing the custom STL loader with Assimp in `gz-common` ([gz-common#845](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-common/pull/845#issuecomment-5534632388)). Benchmarks showed that Assimp is roughly 2x slower for STL meshes and 3.5x slower than `tinyobjloader` for OBJ meshes. Decision: Keep the existing lightweight custom STL loader and `tinyobjloader`.
- **Name the Next Gazebo Release (Gazebo-M)**: This is the final week to vote for the name of the next Gazebo release [here](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/name-the-next-gazebo-release-gazebo-m/57723). Voting closes this Friday, 2026-09-18T00:00:00Z.
- **Gazebo Office Hours** : Gazebo office hours will be combined with ROS office hours, but will not be held this Friday; the next event and schedule will be announced at ROSCon.
- **Deprecation of 32-bit ARM (`armhf`)**: Plans were presented to deprecate 32-bit ARM binary builds across all distributions on the buildfarm ([release-tools#1548](https://github.com/gazebo-tooling/release-tools/issues/1548)). Given that modern ARM hardware (such as Raspberry Pi and Jetson) supports 64-bit (`arm64`), dropping 32-bit binaries will significantly reduce multi-architecture build and maintenance overhead. An announcement will be posted on Discourse for a 10-day community review period prior to removal.
- **Gazebo Release Dashboard** : A new [Gazebo Release Dashboard](https://j-rivero.github.io/gz-release-dashboard/) was demonstrated for tracking library release statuses and packaging dependencies across platforms (including Conda and Debian). The dashboard is being considered for official adoption and will be migrated to a dedicated repository.

## Updates

### Discussed Updates

#### Infrastructure & Buildfarm

- **Homebrew 7.0.0 and macOS Updates** : Homebrew 7.0.0 was released, breaking the `homebrew-zenoh` tap and causing CI failures in `gz-transport` ([gz-transport#963](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-transport/issues/963), upstream issue [homebrew-zenoh#22](https://github.com/eclipse-zenoh/homebrew-zenoh/issues/22), PR [homebrew-zenoh#23](https://github.com/eclipse-zenoh/homebrew-zenoh/pull/23)). A fork will be used if upstream review is delayed. Furthermore, the new test sandbox in Homebrew 7.0.0 breaks `gz-rendering` and `gz-gui` tests ([homebrew-simulation#3571](https://github.com/osrf/homebrew-simulation/issues/3571)), requiring formulae updates before building bottles. Support for Intel CPUs and macOS Sonoma has been dropped, and new macOS buildfarm machines are being prepared.
- **Intermittent Test Failure** : An intermittent failure in `ThrusterTest.AngVelCmdControl` on Ubuntu Resolute is under investigation ([gz-sim#3983](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-sim/issues/3983)).

#### Transport & Performance

- **gz-transport & Zenoh Integration** : Merged the second part of Zenoh 1.8.0 integration for Rotary ([gz-transport#868](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-transport/pull/868)). Zenoh 1.7.2 is now the new minimum requirement (bumped from 1.5.0), while releasing Zenoh 1.8.0 into our main apt repository is required for backporting the `gz-transport` PR to released branches. Resolved an issue where intra-process publishers and subscribers combined with a remote subscriber resulted in duplicate messages, by ensuring Zenoh publications are only delivered to external sessions ([Rotary PR #961](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-transport/pull/961), [Jetty PR #965](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-transport/pull/965)). Additionally, an upstream Zenoh concurrency issue causing test failures during parallel Bazel runs with shared memory enabled has been reproduced and is being patched ([gz-transport#964](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-transport/issues/964)).
- **Rendering & Sensors Camera Optimization** : A memory optimization in `gz-sensors` ([gz-sensors#655](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-sensors/pull/655)) allows rendering directly into reused image message payloads provided by `gz-rendering`, resulting in an ~15% performance boost for high-resolution RGB cameras.
- **CMake MSVC Debug Format** : Ready for review: [gz-cmake#586](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-cmake/pull/586) leaves the MSVC debug information format to CMake rather than hardcoding `/Zi` (which breaks ccache without providing effective release debug symbols). Switching to Ninja improves test execution times by 15–20%.
- **ROSCon Performance Metrics** : Profiling and benchmarks comparing the original Jetty release with `main` are underway in preparation for an upcoming ROSCon talk.

### Written Updates

_The following items were provided as written updates in the agenda but were not discussed live due to time constraints:_

#### Package Updates

- **gz-sim** :
  - Renamed `Server::Ecm` to `Server::EcmScope` and added usage examples ([gz-sim#3964](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-sim/pull/3964), merged).
  - Ready for review: Exposing ECS components and ECM operations to Python ([gz-sim#3957](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-sim/pull/3957)).

- **gz-physics (MuJoCo)**:
  - Added support for `ConstructSdfCollision`, enabling contact visualization in `gz-sim` ([gz-physics#1055](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-physics/pull/1055), merged).
  - Implemented joint velocity commands ([gz-physics#1004](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-physics/pull/1004), merged).
  - Ready for review: Implementation of `GetJointTransmittedWrench` ([gz-physics#1059](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-physics/pull/1059)).

- **gz\_vendor** :
  - Enabled Python bindings in older versions of ROS vendor packages ([gz\_vendor#2](https://github.com/gazebo-tooling/gz_vendor/issues/2)).

#### Infrastructure & CI

- **Rotary Distribution Updates** :
  - Dropped Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble) support for Rotary: Jenkins stable branch CI is disabled, nightly builds are stopped, and `gz-sim` GitHub workflows have dropped 24.04, with other packages to follow ([release-tools#1515](https://github.com/gazebo-tooling/release-tools/issues/1515)).
  - Dropped `freeimage` and `ogre1.9` dependencies in nightly builds. A resulting `gz-sensors` CMake warning is addressed in [gz-cmake#587](https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-cmake/pull/587).

- **GitHub Branch Protection** : Migrated Jetty branches from Noble to Resolute in GitHub repository protections ([terraform\_github\_repos#8](https://github.com/gazebosim/terraform_github_repos/pull/8)).
- **Bazel Central Registry (BCR)**: Updated BCR maintainers across all Gazebo packages supporting Bazel.
- **AWS RDS Deprecation** : Stopped legacy database instances: `gazebosim` (which previously served `api.ignitionrobotics.org`, now returning 503) and `ign-test-db`. Production and staging fuel databases (`gz-fuel-production` and `gz-fuel-staging`) remain available.

#### Documentation

- Updated guidelines for choosing a base branch ([docs#713](https://github.com/gazebosim/docs/pull/713), merged).

As always, the meeting notes are available at [🏛 Gazebo PMC meeting weekly agenda - Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RpVMkwiKqXKnDjqtkviz4qp73oehivf4Z1x-fTITgZY/).

The next Gazebo PMC meeting will be on 2026-09-21T18:00:00Z  
(See [Open Source Robotics Foundation official events](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=agf3kajirket8khktupm9go748@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=UTC))

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**Author:** ![vmb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/discourse.openrobotics.org/vmb/32/21607_2.png) [@vmb](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/u/vmb)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2026, 3:10pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/gazebo-pmc-meeting-minutes-2026-09-14/58127/2 "2026-09-15T15:10:35Z")

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Is the office hours combination going to be an ongoing thing?

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**Author:** ![azeey](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/discourse.openrobotics.org/azeey/32/6795_2.png) [@azeey](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/u/azeey)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2026, 3:13pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/gazebo-pmc-meeting-minutes-2026-09-14/58127/3 "2026-09-15T15:13:43Z")

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Yes, the plan is to do the office hours together. We could do break out rooms if we have too many people. @mjcarroll suggested this, and I think it’s a good idea.

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**Author:** ![mjcarroll](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/discourse.openrobotics.org/mjcarroll/32/35469_2.png) [@mjcarroll](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/u/mjcarroll)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2026, 3:15pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/gazebo-pmc-meeting-minutes-2026-09-14/58127/4 "2026-09-15T15:15:40Z")

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We also discussed that it’s probably better to use our resources to spread office hours in _time_ rather than in _topic_. This is so we can have an EMEA/North America office hours and an APAC/North America office hours without spreading the team too thin.

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**Author:** ![vmb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/discourse.openrobotics.org/vmb/32/21607_2.png) [@vmb](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/u/vmb)\
**Post date:** [September 15, 2026, 3:18pm UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/gazebo-pmc-meeting-minutes-2026-09-14/58127/5 "2026-09-15T15:18:41Z")

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I love everything about this, especially the increase in TZ coverage.