No more command history with cursor keys

[Chris]

Since I've installed (from sources) Python 2.3.4 on SuSE 8.2 the command
history is not working anymore. When I press the cursor keys I get ^[[A or
^[[B ....
I also tried to install IPython but the same problem is there.

What's wrong?

Chris

 

[Alex Martelli]

Since I've installed (from sources) Python 2.3.4 on SuSE 8.2 the command
history is not working anymore. When I press the cursor keys I get ^[[A or
^[[B ....
I also tried to install IPython but the same problem is there.

What's wrong?

You appear to be missing some parts of the 'readline' library --
probably the 'devel' half of it; or, if you have it installed, it's
somewhere the build process for Python and IPython can't find.


Alex

 

[Chris]

Indeed, readline.so exists in my Python2.2 install (part of SuSE 8.2) but
not in the Python 2.3.4 install that I built. I tried to copy the file but
there's a mismatch.
But I don't understand what went wrong: configure / make / make install all
finished successfully.
How can I get that readline.so file?

Chris

Since I've installed (from sources) Python 2.3.4 on SuSE 8.2 the command
history is not working anymore. When I press the cursor keys I get ^[[A or
^[[B ....
I also tried to install IPython but the same problem is there.

What's wrong?

You appear to be missing some parts of the 'readline' library --
probably the 'devel' half of it; or, if you have it installed, it's
somewhere the build process for Python and IPython can't find.


Alex

 

[Christophe Cavalaria]

Indeed, readline.so exists in my Python2.2 install (part of SuSE 8.2) but
not in the Python 2.3.4 install that I built. I tried to copy the file but
there's a mismatch.
But I don't understand what went wrong: configure / make / make install
all finished successfully.
How can I get that readline.so file?

Chris

Since I've installed (from sources) Python 2.3.4 on SuSE 8.2 the
command history is not working anymore. When I press the cursor keys I
get ^[[A or
^[[B ....
I also tried to install IPython but the same problem is there.

What's wrong?

You appear to be missing some parts of the 'readline' library --
probably the 'devel' half of it; or, if you have it installed, it's
somewhere the build process for Python and IPython can't find.


Alex

You probably forgot to install the libreadline or the libreadline-devel
package on your system before you did the ./configure

 

[Alex Martelli]

Indeed, readline.so exists in my Python2.2 install (part of SuSE 8.2) but
not in the Python 2.3.4 install that I built. I tried to copy the file but
there's a mismatch.

Yep, it needs to get rebuilt for the specific Python version.

But I don't understand what went wrong: configure / make / make install all
finished successfully.

Lack of optional components (of which readline is one) is not an error
in the Python build, so it will finish successfully anyway.

How can I get that readline.so file?

Have you installed all readline-related RPMs (Suse's an RPM distro,
right?), including the -devel if any? If not try doing so and retry the
make, it should build the missing readline.so. Otherwise we'll have to
figure out where the readline pieces are and where the Python build is
looking for them instead.

Note that there are other optional components that you may not be
building if you don't have the related -devel RPMs installed. You can
look for all the .so that come with your suse-built Python 2.2 and see
which ones are missing in the 2.3 you built (not sure if some were just
dropped in the 2.2 -> 2.3 transition, but I don't think so...).


Alex