Enable Readline capability in Python 2.6.1

[dorseye]

Greetings.
I am running a virtual machine Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.
It came with Python 2.5 preinstalled, and I'm able to use the "up arrow" (repeat last command entered) in Bash and the 2.5 Python Interpreter.

I installed Python 2.6.1 from source, but in the 2.6.1 interpreter when I hit up arrow to repeat a command all I get is:
>>> ^[[A

I went ahead and ran aptitude and installed the libreadline5-dev using aptitude, then rebuilt from source, and still nothing. Any idea how to resolve this and get the "up arrow" functionality working in my 2.6.1 installation working?

[ssam]

have you tried

import readline

if that works there are a few places you can put to get it imported every time you start the interpreter, see man python for details.

[dorseye]

have you tried

import readline

if that works there are a few places you can put to get it imported every time you start the interpreter, see man python for details.

I have -- no luck with "import readline" either.

[imdano]

Did readline support show up as being on when you ran ./configure the second time? It's possible that the "no" status you got the first time got cached.

[dorseye]

I wondered about the readline-no being cached also, but I did try a new ./configure using --with-readline, and still nothing.

The other thing that is really weird, is that the /usr/Python2.5 and /usr/Python2.6 directories are vastly different, I dont know if I just built it from source totally incorrect?

[imdano]

When you install 2.6 it's going to be missing all the 3rd party libraries you had in 2.5, which might account for some of the differences. I'd take a closer look at your configure output, I remember having an issue where it would ignore a library I just installed even when I explicitly told it to look for it. It started working after I deleted the config.cache file.

[casevh]

You need to install libreadline5-dev.

casevh

[dorseye]

You need to install libreadline5-dev.

casevh

As I said in my first message,

"I went ahead and ran aptitude and installed the libreadline5-dev"

Should I install it a different way?

[casevh]

Sorry, missed that part.

Did you do "make distclean" and "./configure" again?

casevh

[dorseye]

Sorry, missed that part.
Did you do "make distclean" and "./configure" again?
casevh

Now I did:


make distclean
./configure --with-readline
make

And still get:
>>> ^[[A

[casevh]

Are there any warnings at the end of "make"? This is what I get on my system:

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
_bsddb bsddb185 dbm
dl gdbm imageop
sunaudiodev

Is readline listed?

Have you verified that the file "readline.h" exists? (Probably in /usr/include/readline/)

casevh