[Edu-sig] IDLE refusing to run

[John Zelle]

Just for further information on this, the newest versions of IDLE (1.1 
for sure and 1.04 I think), have improved messages about what is going 
on when IDLE won't start due to the socket being in use (from the 
hanging process).

One thing that causes IDLE to crash in this bad way is when a student 
kills the shell window when the program that it is executing is waiting 
for interactive input. This is a bug for which a patch is now available, 
but has not yet been incorporated into the Python release. You can get a 
fix for this particular problem from my page:
http://mcsp.wartburg.ed/zelle/python
The information on patching IDLE is at the very bottom.

I think with this patch IDLE has become quite stable again under 
Windows. Sadly, I'm now having troubles with random lock-ups when 
running on a Debian Linux Testing distribution. I think it's a problem 
with one of the Debian libraries, but have not yet been able to pin it down.

--John


Guido van Rossum wrote:

>Here's something that usually works for me.
>
>Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and select the process list (task manager). Look for
>a process named pythonw.exe (the 'w' is essential). Terminate it. Then
>IDLE should run again.
>
>On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:54:25 -0800, Greg Baker <ggbaker at cs.sfu.ca> wrote:
>  
>
>>We have had complaints from a few students running Python under Windows
>>that they can't get things running.  All seem to take the form:
>>  1. At some point, Python/IDLE under Windows crashed.
>>  2. IDLE won't run at all after that.
>>  3. The regular interpreter will run (python.exe).
>>  4. Uninstalling/reinstalling doesn't help.
>>
>>Does anybody have any idea what to do about this?  (Or who to ask?) I
>>haven't been able to reproduce it to test, but it has happened to
>>several students independantly.
>>
>>--
>>Greg Baker, Lecturer
>>School of Computing Science
>>Simon Fraser University
>>Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6
>>E-mail: ggbaker at cs.sfu.ca
>>
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