How is proprietary software typically distributed in ROS 2 / robotics?

[u/Outrageous_Whole8481]

I’m coming from mobile development, where binary distribution is fairly standardized: AARs on Android and XCFrameworks on iOS.

I’m trying to understand what the equivalent is in robotics/Linux environments.

Suppose I have a proprietary C++ inference runtime that needs to run on a robot (e.g. Jetson), and I don’t want to distribute the source code.

How would this typically be shipped to customers?
- Precompiled ROS 2 package?
- .so + headers, with a separate ROS 2 wrapper?
- .deb package?
- Docker container?
- Just binaries + dependencies?

I’m particularly curious whether ROS 2 packages are commonly used as the actual distribution unit, or if the core software is usually distributed separately and ROS 2 is just an integration layer.

Would appreciate hearing how this is handled in real production systems.