importing rospy and actionlib causes embedding python code in c++ to fail

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Hi, I am using a large code base were our robot path planning is entirely coded in python. We need to call the planner in one c++ code file to find the path length. I have tested my code with other python scripts and it compiles and works well. However, when calling a function from a python file that is a rosnode and imports rospy and actionlib, the returned object from the python code in c++ is NULL. I am guessing rospy must be the problem here. Any ideas about what could be causing this and what could be the solution? Thanks a lot, Zeynab