As I'm a glutton for punishment I keep trying to find a way to get Python 3 to work with ROS, even starting from source.

Side note: I reviewed ROS2, but the TF2 package isn't incorporated into ROS2 Python3 yet.

Anyways, I tried with a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04 with the commands below, but I don't seem to download the resources consistently. Only about 4 packages downloaded with the VCSTools fix described below.

I guess what I'm asking, does anyone have a well described path on how to build ROS1 (anything) with Python3 support? Really all I desire is ROS commands, debugging tools, and TF2.

I've tried following these bash.scripts as well, https://gist.github.com/ShreyasSkandan/fd8682253d71c960b2b56376db6bd74a which also seem to fail similarly.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://ha.pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-key 421C365BD9FF1F717815A3895523BAEEB01FA116

sudo apt update
# can probably leave out wstool?
sudo apt install python3-rosdep python3-rosinstall-generator python3-wstool python3-rosinstall build-essential

sudo rosdep init

sudo rosdep update

# https://github.com/vcstools/vcstools/pull/141
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/tkruse/vcstools
cd vcstools
git checkout mock_server_tar_test
python3 setup.py develop

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/vcstools/wstool
cd wstool
python setup.py develop

mkdir ~/ros_catkin_ws
cd ~/ros_catkin_ws

rosinstall_generator desktop_full --rosdistro melodic --deps --tar > melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall
wstool init -j8 src melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall