catkin_make fails with "Invalid package manifest"

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Hey everybody,

I'm trying to create a catkin workspace, but keep getting the error below when running catkin_make. I run ROS Kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04 and I use a virtual pyton 2.7 conda environment using Anaconda. This is the error I keep getting (the full output is below):

 catkin_pkg.package.InvalidPackage: Invalid package manifest "/opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/../package.xml": Error(s) in /opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/../package.xml:
- The manifest must not contain the following tags: depend, build_export_depend, buildtool_export_depend
CMake Error at /opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/safe_execute_process.cmake:11 (message):
  execute_process(/home/alex/anaconda3/envs/python2/bin/python
  "/opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/parse_package_xml.py"
  "/opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/../package.xml"
  "/home/alex/catkin_ws/build/catkin/catkin_generated/version/package.cmake")
  returned error code 1

I am clueless as to what to do. One other question here suggested PIP-installing catkin_pkg, but that does not solve the problem in my case as catkin_pkg was already installed using PIP, so not finding catkin_pkg is not the issue here. Any help much appreciated!

A bit more information:

Installed ROS Kinetic using sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-desktop-full

Tried creating the workspace exactly following the tutorial here but obviously didn't get past the catkin_make part

Content of /opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/../package.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package format="2">
  <name>catkin</name>
  <version>0.7.6</version>
  <description>Low-level build system macros and infrastructure for ROS.</description>
  <maintainer email="dthomas@osrfoundation.org">Dirk Thomas</maintainer>
  <license>BSD</license>

  <url type="website">http://www.ros.org/wiki/catkin</url>
  <url type="bugtracker">https://github.com/ros/catkin/issues</url>
  <url type="repository">https://github.com/ros/catkin</url>

  <author>Troy Straszheim</author>
  <author>Morten Kjaergaard</author>
  <author>Brian Gerkey</author>
  <author>Dirk Thomas</author>

  <buildtool_depend>cmake</buildtool_depend>
  <buildtool_export_depend>cmake</buildtool_export_depend>

  <depend>python-argparse</depend>
  <depend version_gt="0.2.9">python-catkin-pkg</depend>

  <build_depend>python-empy</build_depend>

  <build_export_depend>gtest</build_export_depend>
  <build_export_depend>python-empy</build_export_depend>
  <build_export_depend>python-nose</build_export_depend>

  <test_depend>python-mock</test_depend>
  <test_depend>python-nose</test_depend>

  <export>
    <rosdoc config="rosdoc.yaml"/>
    <architecture_independent/>
  </export>
</package>

Why does package.xml contain the three tags that it is not supposed to contain, depend, build_export_depend, and buildtool_export_depend, and what can I do about that?

And here is the full output after running catkin_pkg:

$ catkin_make
Base path: /home/alex/catkin_ws
Source space: /home/alex/catkin_ws/src
Build space: /home/alex/catkin_ws/build
Devel space: /home/alex/catkin_ws/devel
Install space: /home/alex/catkin_ws/install
Creating symlink "/home/alex/catkin_ws/src/CMakeLists.txt" pointing to "/opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/toplevel.cmake"
####
#### Running command: "cmake /home/alex/catkin_ws/src -DCATKIN_DEVEL_PREFIX=/home/alex/catkin_ws/devel -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/alex/catkin_ws/install -G Unix Makefiles" in "/home/alex/catkin_ws/build"
####
-- The C compiler identification is GNU 5.4.0
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 5.4.0
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting ...