Subscribe (RSS)For those who are unfamiliar with IPython: it’s a Python shell replacement that adds many features for developers. It’s beyond the scope of this post to go into greater detail, but if you want to learn more you can visit the IPython website.
IPython has been an enormous aid to me in developing with Django, but there was one issue I was having that nearly drove me nuts. Running on Mac OSX Leopard, I found that occasionally, as I was typing a long bit of Python, the screen would go all (for lack of a better word) wonky and part of what I was typing would go into another part of the terminal screen away from the actual command line. Other times, as I would cycle through previously typed commands, the same thing would occur, obscuring or removing entirely the possibility of editing certain lines I had typed in. The end result: I ended up having to waste much time retyping the same or nearly the same commands over again, or worse, an entire block if I was in the middle of writing a method.
Well, today, I finally got sick of it and started searching for a fix. It was difficult to search for since it’s hard to even explain what happens, but I did find a fix at IPython’s site, of all places. According to the site:
Many of the problems users have experienced in IPython on OS X leopard are due to Apple’s use of the BSD editline library instead of the GNU readline library in Leopard’s system python. Ludwig Schwardt’s has created an egg that statically links agains the GNU readline library.
To get the egg, simply run the following from the command-line:
sudo easy_install -f http://ipython.scipy.org/dist/ readline
The egg can also be downloaded directly from IPython’s site.
