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Ubuntu ros-desktop package does not work out of the box

in flag

I'm on ubuntu focal and I noticed something weird about the ros-desktop package which comes with ubuntu. If one installs ros-desktop, it is not even able to start a roscore by default:

> sudo apt install -y ros-desktop
...
> roscore
...
Resource not found: roslaunch
...
    raise ResourceNotFound(name, ros_paths=self._ros_paths)
rospkg.common.ResourceNotFound: roslaunch

The default answer to this is to source setup.bash, but this package version by ubuntu does not seem to provide a setup.bash as everything should be already installed.

Even worse, if an unexperienced user checks on this error they might install ros-noetic-desktop directly from the upstream ros source, which will brick their system since ros-noetic-desktop and ros-desktop are conflicting.

So my questions are:

  • Why does ubuntu provide the package ros-desktop which conflicts with ros-noetic-desktop?
  • Does this conflict constitute a bug that should be filed at launchpad?
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