Skip to content
This repository has been archived by the owner on Dec 6, 2021. It is now read-only.

Latest commit

 

History

History
40 lines (30 loc) · 2.51 KB

linux_ros_anaconda_warning.md

File metadata and controls

40 lines (30 loc) · 2.51 KB
Raw

A Warning to Linux users who already have ROS installed:

Upon completion of the Anaconda install, you should have a new Anaconda environment called RoboND with all the packages you need. However, if you have ROS installed on your Linux machine you will most likely run into a conflict between Python installations due to the PYTHONPATH variable being set in your /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash file which gets sourced in your .bashrc file.

The hallmark of this conflict is getting an import error when you go to import packages that you just installed using Anaconda. To test whether you have this problem, first you fire up Python at the command line:

$ python
Python 3.5.2 |Anaconda custom (x86_64)| (default, Jul  2 2016, 17:52:12) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 4.2 (clang-425.0.28)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Next you go to import a package (OpenCV or cv2 in this case) and you get an ImportError like this (or similar):

>>> import cv2
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: /opt/ros/kinetic/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/cv2.so: undefined symbol: PyCObject_Type

The problem here is that Python is looking for a package in /opt/ros/kinetic/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ when it should be looking in the Anaconda installation directories. The reason for this is that with your ROS install, your .bashrc file contains the line source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash, which sets your PYTHONPATH variable to the /opt/ros/kinetic/... location.

The solution is to unset your PYTHONPATH variable before sourcing your Anaconda environment:

$ unset PYTHONPATH
$ source activate RoboND

And it should work! But in this case, you'll need to remember to do this each time you want to use your Anaconda Python install.

For a more permanent solution, you can add the unset PYTHONPATH line to your .bashrc file, but you need to make sure you drop it into the right location, after sourcing ROS. To do this, open your .bashrc file (should be located in your ~/ directory) and find the line that says source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash and make this edit:

source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash
unset PYTHONPATH

See this post and this post for more information on the matter.