Hi everyone,
I’m running into a blocking issue when trying to build a custom Isaac Sim extension that uses rclpy. Isaac Sim 6.0.1 ships Python 3.12, while ROS 2 Humble ships rclpy compiled for Python 3.10. Because Python C extensions aren’t ABI‑compatible across minor versions, Isaac Sim fails to import rclpy:
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'rclpy._rclpy_pybind11'
Sourcing Humble only puts the 3.10 packages on PYTHONPATH, which causes the failure — it doesn’t fix it.
This means any custom extension that previously used rclpy (which worked in Isaac Sim 2023.x because it shipped Python 3.10) now breaks in Isaac Sim 6.
I understand that Isaac Sim’s built‑in ROS 2 bridge is C++ and avoids this issue entirely, but I’m wondering:
Is there any supported way to use rclpy inside Isaac Sim 6?
Has anyone successfully built ROS 2 Humble against Python 3.12 for Isaac Sim?
Are there plans for Isaac Sim to provide a Python‑compatible rclpy build?
How are other teams handling custom message types or ROS driven logic that previously lived inside Isaac extensions?
Right now the only viable architecture seems to be:
Isaac Sim = pure compute nodes only
ROS 2 = handled externally via system Python 3.10
Communication = Isaac’s C++ ROS2 bridge
Would love to hear how others are dealing with this, or if NVIDIA has any official recommendations, because Isaac Sim 6.0.1 is documented to support ROS2 Humble on Ubuntu 22.04
Thanks!