[IPython-dev] iPython binary wheels for OS-X

Aaron Meurer asmeurer at gmail.com
Mon Dec 9 21:37:19 EST 2013


On Dec 9, 2013, at 4:28 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

On 9 December 2013 22:40, Aaron Meurer <asmeurer at gmail.com> wrote:

easy_install hacks sys.path to put installed packages before the

standard library. That was controversial behaviour at the time it was

implemented, IIRC - Guido specifically did not want to have user

installed packages able to overwrite stdlib behaviour. I don't know if

that position has changed, it's so rarely relevant that I don't think

people care that much (they tend to care more about the nasty pth file

hacks just for their own sake, rather than for the implications :-))


Does Python 3.3 help the situation? They refactored the import system

quite a bit there.


Not particularly - ultimately, the key point here is that you're not
*supposed* to override the standard library modules (as I understand
it - this is only my recollection of the debates at the time!)

To me, the real fix would be for IPython to import its *own* readline,
which wraps the stdlib readline when appropriate, and other modules as
needed. Then there's no overriding and no name clashes to worry about.
(If that was done, pyreadline could also stop making itself available
as "readline" so it too becomes available only when requested). AIUI,
that's what MinRK's patch does.

Ideally, the core Python interactive prompt would *also* allow users
to plug in their own readline functionality, but that's somewhat
orthogonal to how external projects like IPython deal with the issue


This is related to the discussion at
https://github.com/ipython/ipython/pull/4353. My opinion is that IPython
should not try to build an API on top of readline. Rather, just use
readline's own API and make sure it works with IPython.

Aaron Meurer

Paul
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