ROS Project leader election stalls; Lyrical release blocked by regression

The ROS PMC meeting on July 14, 2026, highlighted a critical leadership gap: no nominations were received for the ROS Project Leader role by the July 13 deadline. PMC representative mjcarroll opened a broader discussion on restructuring the role, noting that since clalancette's departure, the position is no longer a full-time paid role. Key challenges include the 'technical backstop' function—unscoped, high-pressure firefighting that can consume 40%+ of working time. Suggested relief includes exempting the leader from Waffle note-taking and rosdistro duties.

On the technical front, the Lyrical release is stalled due to a new behavior_tree_cpp release causing CMake macros issues (not the package's fault). A sync is on hold while root cause is resolved, with a revert as a fallback. The Client Library Working Group approved two PRs in rosidl_typesupport_fastrtps that trade longer compile times for better runtime serialization performance via inlining, limited to deeply nested messages. Buildfarm issues include rmw_connextdds secure tests failing due to a license issue from newly enabled ARM jobs, and a compiler warning in test_buffer.cpp after a recent rosidl update.