Hi All,

Last month we ran into some problems when we were using two different
release mechanisms for installing code. There was a thread on ros-users you
can find in the archives [1] The primary issue was that some packages were
coming from apt and some from pip resulting in an apt-get update being able
to break the working system as the pip based packages would not get updated
at the same time.

The cleanest solution is to stop using both pip and apt on the same system.
 Thus I announce that all the packages which we were previously
recommending using pip to install are now available through apt on Ubuntu
and using apt is the recommended way to install them.

If you have previously installed using pip it is recommended to uninstall
using pip the tools now available through apt.  I will attach instructions
for uninstalling these tools below.

These tools include, rospkg, rosdep, rosinstall, vcstools, and rosrelease.
 In apt they are named python-PACKAGENAME, such as python-rospkg.

Tully


[1]
https://code.ros.org/lurker/thread/20120705.075600.163311e9.en.html#i20120705.075600.163311e9


Uninstallation Instructions:

If you have pip installed a package you can use pip to uninstall the
package if you have pip version 1.1 or greater.

sudo pip uninstall PACKAGE_NAME

Caveats, on machines like lucid are that you will have to `pip install pip`
to get the new version.  Also pip uninstall regularly leaves scripts in
/usr/local/bin  after uninstalling it is recommended to remove any
executable from /usr/local/bin starting with ros such as rosws rosco
rosinstall... If you have installed something else starting with the ros
name be careful, and possibly leave it alone.

If you are having trouble with any scripts you can type 'which SCRIPTNAME`
to determine which executable is being run.  If it's in /usr/local/bin you
are still using the pip based version.  All of the apt based tools will be
in /usr/bin.



-- 
Tully Foote
tfoote@willowgarage.com
(650) 475-2827