Packages and repositories without a release into rolling should display the latest release by default.

[tfoote]

Right now if you browse to some package that doesn't have a rolling release. By default it will display

For example: https://index.ros.org/p/rviz_animated_view_controller/

It would be great for us to default to the latest released version. Unless the user has explicitly asked for #rolling

This is causing google to not index the pages without releases in the latest distro because the default page render is blank.

[rkent]

There are three issues here.

1. What do we display if there is no cookie set? That is probably the Google case, but not likely for most users.
2. What do we show if there is there is no released version for the currently set cookie distro?
3. What do we show if the URL specifically requests a version, but that package has no released version for that distro?

[tfoote]

There are three issues here.

What do we display if there is no cookie set? That is probably the Google case, but not likely for most users.

This is the case, either a crawler bot, or a first time user following an inbound link.

What do we show if there is there is no released version for the currently set cookie distro?

I wasn't actually aware that there was this hidden state. In this case we should show the statement of no version available as we can treat it as a specific request. This is a little bit odd as it could mean that a link that is shared might have different renderings. How much do we rely on this cookie versus the url encoding?

What do we show if the URL specifically requests a version, but that package has no released version for that distro?

Same as above. In this case we should show the statement of no version available, as it's an explicit request.

[rkent]

The rosdistro cookie predates me, see distro_switch.js

I'm a little confused by the the lifetime of the cookie. My dev console shows it to be a Session cookie, but it seems to persist if I restart my browser. I think persisting it makes sense though, as I imagine that most users have a particular distro they use and don't frequently change it.

BTW, how are you seeing the Google search stuff?

[tfoote]

The rosdistro cookie predates me, see distro_switch.js

Thanks for the pointer.

I'm a little confused by the the lifetime of the cookie. My dev console shows it to be a Session cookie, but it seems to persist if I restart my browser. I think persisting it makes sense though, as I imagine that most users have a particular distro they use and don't frequently change it.

I agree that people generally will want one version. But I'm a little bit worried about the lack of visibility into it as well as repeatability.

We're also using the odd hashtag encoding versus standard url encoding like we use elsewhere: https://wiki.ros.org/rosout?distro=noetic And there we made sure to switch the url encoding of all outbound links when you switched versions. Instead right now we appear to be relying on the cookie when following internal links.

The cookie can also get into trouble if you say have two parallel windows open on different distros if you follow a link in the other windows to a dependency it will jump to the last selected distro in the other window.

I've opened a new issue #490

BTW, how are you seeing the Google search stuff?

I have access to the Analytics and Google Search Console for the site. If you have questions/analysis that would be helpful please let me know.