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venv ↔ ROS 2 / colcon — environment conflict

An active venv breaks ros2 run/launch, but you need it for colcon build. COLCON_IGNORE is the fix.

stablea_kuteynikov321updated 2026-05-11T00:00:00.000ZClaudeDroneAleksNotesTroubleshootingROS2Python

WARN: venv and ROS 2 conflict.

Action	Environment
`colcon build`	only with venv active
`ros2 run` / `ros2 launch`	only without venv (`deactivate`)
`touch venv/COLCON_IGNORE`	so colcon doesn’t see the venv as a package

Make colcon ignore the venv

touch /home/aleks/git/proj/claudedrone/simulation/venv/COLCON_IGNORE

Why

ROS 2 uses its own Python (the system one), and venv wraps its own. When venv is active, ros2 sees venv’s Python, which doesn’t know about the installed ROS 2 packages. So:

Want to build with colcon using your venv-deps → activate venv.
Want to run with ros2 run/launch → deactivate venv.

COLCON_IGNORE is a marker for colcon: “don’t scan this folder, no packages here.” Otherwise colcon will find the venv’s setup.py and try to build it as a ROS package.