IPython on OSX Leopard

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. With this egg installed in /Library/Python/2.5/site-packages (or anywhere on the PYTHONPATH), the system python on OS X 10.5 is now pretty much the way to go. Dtrace support is a real advantage and setuptools mitigates the other issues described below.

Many of the issues due to libedit have been fixed in recent versions of IPython. If you are using the latest IPython and are still experiencing issues due to readline vs. libedit incompatibilities, installing the readline egg (below) should fix things.

Installing readline-2.5.1-py2.5-macosx-10.5-[i386|PPC].egg via easy_install (Recommended)

If you are using SVN 1.5, you will likely need to install a patch to setuptools. If you have not installed SVN 1.5, you may skip this step. From the terminal, type

sudo easy_install http://www.jaraco.com/ASP/eggs/setuptools-0.6c8_svn15fix.egg

Then, install the readline egg. From the terminal, type

sudo easy_install readline

to install the egg using setuptools.

Building readline-2.5.1-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg from source

The source for Ludwig's .egg that statically links the readline library is attached to this page (python-readline-leopard-011808.tar.gz). You will also need the readline-5.2.tar.gz file from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline. Put readline-5.2.tar.gz in the unzipped python-readline-leopard-XXXXXX folder and run the build.sh script to build and install the readline-2.5.1-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg.