🐞 Calling rosdep init fails

[petrlmat]

Issue
Calling rosdep init fails when multiple versions of rospkg and/or rosdep packages are installed.
The error output message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/rosdep", line 11, in <module>
    load_entry_point('rosdep==0.22.1', 'console_scripts', 'rosdep')()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 490, in load_entry_point
    return get_distribution(dist).load_entry_point(group, name)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 2854, in load_entry_point
    return ep.load()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 2445, in load
    return self.resolve()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 2451, in resolve
    module = __import__(self.module_name, fromlist=['__name__'], level=0)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rosdep2/__init__.py", line 45, in <module>
    from .lookup import RosdepDefinition, RosdepView, RosdepLookup, \
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rosdep2/lookup.py", line 44, in <module>
    from .sources_list import SourcesListLoader
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rosdep2/sources_list.py", line 42, in <module>
    from .gbpdistro_support import get_gbprepo_as_rosdep_data, download_gbpdistro_as_rosdep_data
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rosdep2/gbpdistro_support.py", line 14, in <module>
    from .platforms.debian import APT_INSTALLER
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rosdep2/platforms/debian.py", line 34, in <module>
    from rospkg.os_detect import (
ImportError: cannot import name 'OS_RASPBIAN' from 'rospkg.os_detect' (/usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/rospkg/os_detect.py)

Solution
Uninstall all versions of rosdep and rospkg and install them only through apt, which is the official way:

• http://wiki.ros.org/rospkg
• http://wiki.ros.org/rosdep

sudo pip3 uninstall rospkg rosdep
sudo pip uninstall rospkg rosdep
sudo apt install python3-rospkg python3-rosdep

Initialize rosdep:

sudo -E rosdep init

The -E flag preserves the user environment variables even when running the command with sudo.

[matemat13]

If you're getting a rosdep: command not found error, try running sudo apt install --reinstall python3-rospkg python3-rosdep.