Since OS X 10.9 Mavericks is now out, people are running into a severe problem when using some Python interpreters interactively. The symptom is that the interpreter in interactive mode crashes after typing two lines:
$ python3.3 Python 3.3.2 (v3.3.2:d047928ae3f6, May 13 2013, 13:52:24) [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> "Hello" # first line OK 'Hello' >>> "World" # second line causes crash Segmentation fault: 11 It does not matter what is entered on the two lines; the interpreter crashes after the second line. The problem is caused by an upstream change in the OS X 10.9 editline library, libedit. Most recent versions of the python.org installers dynamically link to the system-provided libedit and are susceptible to the problem. These include Pythons from the following current installers: 3.3.2 64-bit/32-bit 10.6+ 3.3.2 32-bit-only 10.5+ 2.7.5 64-bit/32-bit 10.6+ Older releases of similar installers are also susceptible. 2.7.x Pythons from the 32-bit-only installers are not susceptible because they do not use libedit. Pythons using GNU readline, including those with the PyPI readline distribution installed should not have problems. Also, the Apple-supplied system Pythons (2.7.x, 2.6,x, and 2.5.x) shipped with OS X 10.9 do not exhibit the crash. The problem is described in Issue18458. It describes a workaround: disabling the readline extension by renaming or deleting it. It also provides a script that can be downloaded to automate this "patching". The fix for the problem has been released in the current 3.4.0a4 installers. It will be available in the installers for Python 3.3.3 and 2.7.6, which are expected to be released in the near future. Release candidate installers for both should be available by Monday. http://bugs.python.org/issue18458 Otherwise, for the most part, the transition to OS X 10.9 appears to be relatively problem-free so far. Please open issues on the Python bug tracker for any new problems you encounter (after doing a quick search to see if it has already been reported!). -- Ned Deily, n...@acm.org -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
