gedit 'External Tools' plugin hashlib weirdness

[Peter Otten]

Joel Hedlund wrote:

> I'm having a weird problem with the 'External Tools' plugin for gedit,
> that seems to get weirder the more I dig into it. When I start gedit
> by clicking a launcher (from the Ubuntu menu, panel or desktop)
> everything is dandy and the 'External Tools' plugin works as expected.
> When gedit is launched from the terminal, the 'External Tools' plugin
> is greyed out in the plugin list and I get this traceback on stderr:
> 
> $ gedit
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "/usr/lib/gedit-2/plugins/externaltools/__init__.py", line 24,
> in <module>
>     from manager import Manager
>   File "/usr/lib/gedit-2/plugins/externaltools/manager.py", line 27,
> in <module>
>     import hashlib
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.6/hashlib.py", line 136, in <module>
>     md5 = __get_builtin_constructor('md5')
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.6/hashlib.py", line 63, in
> __get_builtin_constructor
>     import _md5
> ImportError: No module named _md5
> 
> ** (gedit:8714): WARNING **: Error loading plugin 'External Tools'
> 
> The same thing happens if I try to activate the plugin from a gedit
> launched from the terminal (if it's already been deactivated from a
> gedit launched from the menu).
> 
> My analysis is that gedit tries to import the externaltools package,
> which imports hashlib, which tries to import _hashlib but fails and
> falls back to _md5 which also fails, which apparently /should not
> happen/, or so google tells me. One of _hashlib and _md5 should always
> exist.
> 
> However, importing _hashlib in a python interpreter works just fine,
> i.e:
> 
> $ python -c 'import _hashlib'
> 
> returns nothing. What also puzzles me is that I don't seem to have
> _hashlib* anywhere on my system (am I supposed to?) and getting the
> __file__ attribute off the module doesn't work, and help(_hashlib)
> says FILE is (built-in).
> 
>>>> import _hashlib
>>>> _hashlib.__file__
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute '__file__'
> 
> Google drops vague hints that there may be a a virtualenv that one
> might have to rebuild, but in that case I have no idea where to
> begin.
> 
> I've tried reinstalling the ubuntu packages gedit, gedit-common and
> gedit-plugins, but to no avail. And the machine runs a fully updated
> ubuntu karmic koala (10.4) that has survived numerous dist-upgrades,
> if that's of any use to anybody.
> 
> I'd appreciate any input on this, even if it's just new bushes to
> whack for scaring the problem out into the light.

You could add

import sys
print sys.executable

at the top of 

/usr/lib/gedit-2/plugins/externaltools/__init__.py

Maybe there's some confusion about what python interpreter should be used.

Peter