[ros-users] [Discourse.ros.org] [General] Should we warn (new) users about difficulties with Python 3 and alternative Python interpreters?

[Geoffrey Biggs]

[quote="tfoote, post:12, topic:3874"]
There is a level that setting up an alternative python interpreter is a moderately advanced topic and if youre choosing to do that you will need to know and understand what youre doing, and it will inherently take more steps.
[/quote]

In general I agree with this sentiment, but Anaconda is different. It's easy to install and a lot of people install it because they're told it's "Python, but better" or because it sounds like a neat idea or even just for kicks, without having a clue what it's doing to their system. It's got to the point where I have *at least* one person using Anaconda in every tutorial I run, and they almost never understand why it is making `rospy` usage fail. Having not used it myself the first couple of times this happened took me a while to fix, but now it's got to the point where when someone is having trouble importing `rospy` the first thing I do is open up their `.bashrc` file and look for references to Anaconda. I don't ask them first anymore, either, because a couple of people didn't even remember installing it.

Having a good question and answer on answers.ros.org is a good idea, but I think there is benefit in putting a very brief note with a link to it on the rospy tutorial page or somewhere like that.





---
[Visit Topic](https://discourse.ros.org/t/should-we-warn-new-users-about-difficulties-with-python-3-and-alternative-python-interpreters/3874/13) or reply to this email to respond.