Move the tier4_autoware_utils package to the autoware_common repository

[takayuki5168]

Background

Currently, the autoware_common repository has an autoware_utils package, which is almost not used by any other packages.
Instead, we have a similar package which is a tier4_autoware_utils package in the autoware.universe repository. This is widely used by packages in the autoware.universe repository.

Now, this is an off topic, but based on this discussion, we decided to add autoware_ prefix to the packages in Autoware.

Proposal

Considering the above situations, I propose

• removing an autoware_utils package
• renaming a tier4_autoware_utils package to autoware_utils, and putting it in the autoware_common so that other repositories like autoware.core can use it.

[xmfcx]

Sounds good 👍

[esteve]

@takayuki5168 @xmfcx Why not just move the code from tier4_autoware_utils to autoware_utils and remove tier4_autoware_utils? It seems cleaner to me this way than deleting a package, moving code to a third package (e.g. lanelet2_extension), moving the tier4_autoware_utils package to autoware_common, and then moving/deleting the code from lanelet2_extension.

[takayuki5168]

Thank you for the proposal.
The way you proposed is also fine to me. I will update the PR later.

[kyoichi-sugahara]

@xmfcx @esteve cc: @takayuki5168
Please allow me to make a proposal regarding this matter on behalf of @takayuki5168 san. This proposal has been agreed upon with him.

Originally, we had proposed removing the autoware_utils_package in autoware_common and porting the utils from autoware.universe to autoware_common with a rename.

However, we would like to change the planned work to

• keep the utils in autoware_common as they are
• add a prefix to the utils in autoware.universe (renaming them to autoware_universe_utils)

Since this proposal does not include changes to autoware_common, we believe there should be no issues.
However, if there are any concerns, please let us know, and we will stop the work.

As an additional comment, the reasons for wanting to switch to the new proposal are as follows:

• tier4_autoware_utils contains many features that are still under development, and if they are ported to a separate repository, it will increase the effort required to make changes.
• The current tier4_autoware_utils includes dependencies on tier4_***_msgs and is currently referenced by many processes in autoware.universe, making the porting work difficult.

Therefore, we would like to exclude this from the current autoware prefix addition work.

[kyoichi-sugahara]

@xmfcx

So there is no proposal then.

Yes! thas's right.
Thank you so much for the comment, we will procees the rename task.

[takayuki5168]

Thank you all! I closed the following PR.
autowarefoundation/autoware_common#251

[mitsudome-r]

@takayuki5168 @kyoichi-sugahara
The proposal sounds good with me as well.

[esteve]

I'd just keep tier4_autoware_utils, but move any code that doesn't depend on a tier4_ package to the package in the autoware_common repo

[xmfcx]

but move any code that doesn't depend on a tier4_ package to the package in the autoware_common repo

They don't want to move the code because Autoware Universe depends on it heavily. And any change would require 2 PRs at the same time, making development hard.