As mentioned in the setuptools release notes with v80.0.0:

Develop command no longer uses easy_install, but instead defers execution to pip (which then will re-invoke Setuptools via PEP 517 to build the editable wheel). Most of the options to develop are dropped. This is the final warning before the command is dropped completely in a few months. Use-cases relying on 'setup.py develop' should pin to older Setuptools version or migrate to modern build tooling.

On my Jetson Orin Nx Development Kit (from Seeedstudio) by default setuptools >v80.0.0 was installed leading to:

usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or: setup.py --help-commands
   or: setup.py cmd --help

error: option --editable not recognized

when running colcon build --symlink-install. For reference downgrading to a version before 80.0.0 fixed the issue for me for now but there should probably still be a migration path/compatibility for newer version.