"upstream packages" increasingly becoming a problem

Old post, but I felt this could use a bump.

There appears to be a new surge of users installing the upstreamed version of especially the various Python packages on Ubuntu Focal and Bionic. A selection of ROS Answers Q&As:

And these are just the ones I could quickly find, all from 2020, and there are many more like this on ROS Answers.

First, to reiterate: I’m actually grateful some of these packages exist, as it really helps when working with otherwise unsupported architectures (especially embedded platforms which run Debian).

But the “upstream package” problems need to be addressed, as it negatively affects the experience of (new) users and doesn’t seem to go away by itself.

I’m willing to do the work at this point, but I don’t know what to do.

@dirk-thomas / @jspricke / @kyrofa / anyone else with insight into this: is there any way we could improve user experience here in some way?

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