Python3, ROS Melodic and Debian Stretch

Question

Python 2.x is nearing it's EOL and so it's time to move over to Python 3 with new development efforts.

Does anyone know the status of ROS Melodic and Python 3 with Debian Stretch? The ROS packages for melodic and Python 3 support would be a good reason to switch.

From the Melodic REP I read:

Ubuntu will most likely stop supporting Python 2 in release 20.04. To make sure ROS will be able to support that version of Ubuntu, ROS Python packages starting with Melodic Morenia are highly encouraged to support both Python 2.7 and Python 3.5 or later. During the development of Melodic there will be work undertaken to support both Python 2 and Python 3 (including rosdep keys) so ROS package developers can more easily test with either version of Python.

Which sounds like both Python2 and Python3 are supported by ROS - the question is are the packages built against Python 2 or 3?

Note: We have to use Debian due to our RT kernel requirements.

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Originally posted by machinekoder on ROS Answers with karma: 69 on 2018-05-22

Post score: 1

Answer 1

Please see ros-infrastructure/rep#149 (draft for REP 151 - Python 3 support) on ros-infrastructure/rep.

Afaik that summarises the current plans for Python 3 support in ROS 1.

the question is are the packages built against Python 2 or 3?

Afaik many packages are already bilingual, but as 'ROS' (which is somewhat ambiguous: which parts?) is large, this cannot be guaranteed for all packages. "core" packages (such as rospkg, rosdistro, catkin_pkg, etc) should all be bilingual already.

The packages produced by the buildfarm however still target Python 2 afaik (but see ros-infrastructure/rep#149 again).

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Originally posted by gvdhoorn with karma: 86574 on 2018-05-22

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1