How do I solve Fuerte overlay creation problem?

Question

Using Ubuntu Precise 64 bit. Installation of Fuerte stopped cleanly at: Processing triggers for python-support ...

sam@Mecha:~$ sudo apt-get install python-rosinstall python-rosdep
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
python-rosdep is already the newest version.
python-rosinstall is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.

sam@Mecha:~$ echo $PYTHONPATH
/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.6/dist-packages:/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.6/dist-packages:/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.6/dist-packages:/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.6/dist-packages:/usr/lib/python3.1/dist-packages

SO HERE"S THE PROBLEM when I try to do the overlay:

sam@Mecha:~$ rosws init ~/fuerte_workspace /opt/ros/fuerte
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/rosws", line 4, in <module>
    import pkg_resources
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 2711, in <module>
    parse_requirements(__requires__), Environment()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pkg_resources.py", line 584, in resolve
    raise DistributionNotFound(req)
pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: rosinstall==0.6.16

What to do?

Apparently, one should not combine pip and apt on Ubuntu, and preferably not use pip on Ubuntu since pip is for non-Ubuntu. How do I uninstall an old vcstools installation under Ubuntu Precise? (sudo pip uninstall rosinstall vcstools rospkg ---------does not work)-

I installed (DID NOT USE EASY_INSTALL)using the instructions at http://ros.org/wiki/fuerte/Installation/Ubuntu -----THIS USES APT...and I am not supposed to combine apt with pip. pip needs to be installed, but I should not use it according to TullyFoote.

Concerning "you did not tell us the error"...., what error are you taking about?! The "error", DistributionNotFound: rosinstall==0.6.16 is listed above......if you are referring to errors using pip....I NEVER USED PIP.

I'd rather use apt to uninstall rosinstall, vcstools, and instead of messing with the system manually.

It seems if I installed using apt, then I should be able to uninstall using apt, right?!

Can anyone tell me how to uninstall rosinstall, vcstools and rospkg using apt under Ubuntu Precise? (I never touched easy_install or pip)

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Originally posted by TurtleBot_Fan on ROS Answers with karma: 287 on 2012-09-19

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by Eric Perko on 2012-09-23:
No answer was accepted, so this question should not be closed as "question is answered, right answer accepted".

Answer 1

It looks like you still have an old, pip based installation of rosws on your system. I guess which rosws shows /usr/local/bin/rosws instead of /usr/bin/rosws. Get rid of the old installation and try again:

sudo pip uninstall rosinstall vcstools rospkg

Edit: You are right, you are not supposed to use pip on Ubuntu anymore. But apparently, you installed rosinstall using either pip or easy_install a while ago. Now you need to get rid of it again. Unfortunately, easy_install does not provide an uninstall option, but pip does. I don't know why pip uninstall does not work for you (unfortunately you forgot to tell us the error, see the support guidelines). Have a look at this thread for more information on the deprecation of pip.

Alternatively, you can get rid of the python packages rosinstall, vcstools and rospkg manually. They were installed in /usr/local, binaries in the subdirectory bin and python stuff somewhere under lib/dist-packages or lib/site-packages.

Edit 2 Fact is, the path of the binary in the exception you posted in your question points to rosws in /usr/local/bin. Fact is that installing rosws with the debian package python-rosinstall will put the binary in /usr/bin (you can double-check if you don't believe me with dpkg -L python-rosinstall). That means you can uninstall python-rosinstall if you want (sudo apt-get remove python-rosinstall), it will just not help and probably uninstall your complete ros installation.

Apparently you have a conflicting version of rosws, rosinstall, vcstools etc. that might be causing the exception you get. I don't know where this installation is coming from on your system, but most commonly these files were relicts from easy_install/pip based installations, that's why I guessed that you might have used it.

To get rid of it, you could try installing pip and executing the command I posted above to uninstall it. Using it for uninstalling something is fine, I'm just not sure if it will work. If it does not work, you need to delete the rosinstall binaries and python files manually as I said in my previous edit.

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Originally posted by Lorenz with karma: 22731 on 2012-09-19

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 2

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Original comments

Comment by TurtleBot_Fan on 2012-09-20:
When i do your recommended command I get this: sam@Mecha:~$ sudo pip uninstall rosinstall vcstools rospkg [sudo] password for sam: sudo: pip: command not found sam@Mecha:~$ man pip No manual entry for pip
What should I do now? (pip is for NON_UBUNTU, what is correct for Ubuntu?)

Comment by TurtleBot_Fan on 2012-09-20:\

Comment by dornhege on 2012-09-20:
pip is also available for ubuntu. You can install that. My guess is you installed via easy_install, which IIRC doesn't have uninstall. Alternately, you can also manually delete the files, but I'd recommend pip.

Comment by dejanpan on 2012-09-21:
in Ubuntu 10.04 I have following 2 packages: a) pip - pip is the Perl Installation Program and b) python-pip - pip is a replacement for easy_install. Weirdly they both get installed as /usr/bin/pip. Anyhow, I suspect that you guys talk about the python-pip and that one still does not have uninstall.

Comment by dejanpan on 2012-09-21:
Further I have the following ROS files in my /usr/local/bin: rosco rosdep-gbp-brew rosdep-source rosinstall roslocate rosws. Can you tell me which of them left overs from the old, pip or easy_install based installation? Thx, D.

Comment by Lorenz on 2012-09-21:
I think all of them are left overs. Ros should not install anything in /usr/local anymore. Additionally you will probably have a bunch of python files in /usr/local/lib/python/dist-packages or something like that that you might also need to get rid of.