[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Pythonmac-SIG Digest, Vol 20, Issue 23

[Bob Ippolito]

On Dec 19, 2004, at 12:37 PM, Jon Schull wrote:

> The problem of multiple pythons on OSX is really really crippling.     
> I use visual python (which requires X which requires one python) and I 
> want to work in and run with the  standard OS X look and feel.
>
> I spend literally hours every month or two trying (unsuccessfully) to 
> get the various systems to co-exist and the result is not  pretty.  At 
> the moment, idle doesn't work anywhere, at all.   Here's the tip of my 
> iceberg.  Suggestions welcome.
>> 208-186-56-189:~ jis$ idle
>> -bash: /sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/idle.py: Permission denied
>> 208-186-56-189:~ jis$ sudo idle
>> Password:
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>   File "/sw/bin/idle", line 3, in ?
>>     from idlelib.PyShell import main
>>   File 
>> "/sw/src/root-python23-2.3.4-2/sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/PyShell.py", 
>> line 11, in ?
>>   File "/sw/lib/python2.3/threading.py", line 13, in ?
>>     from traceback import print_exc as _print_exc
>> ImportError: cannot import name print_exc
>>
>
> The ideal would of course be a single python.  But failing that would 
> be a single installer that would put in place the two (or even more) 
> pythons needed in a manner that allowed one to work and install new 
> modules as needed, without risking obscure disasters.

There is definitely something wrong with your Fink installation of 
Python, which probably has no relevance to having multiple Python 
installations.  I stay miles away from Fink, because terrible things 
have happened every time I've tried it, so I don't know what the 
problem is specifically.  It's especially troubling to see that "idle" 
and "sudo idle" has different behavior.  I suggest reporting these 
issues to the relevant maintainers for the Fink packages.  That 
permission denied error looks like something is missing a +x and/or the 
"idle" shell script is not correct

For what it's worth, I haven't had any such problems with Darwinports 
and its Python... however, VPython isn't available from Darwinports at 
this time, so it's probably not of much use to you yet.

-bob