[New-bugs-announce] [issue16346] readline problem

[Mathieu Dutour Sikiric]

New submission from Mathieu Dutour Sikiric:

Dear all,

I tried to install Python 2.7.3 in a home directory for simplicity. On the Ubuntu platform that I had, the readline-dev was not installed.
So, I I tried to install the readline package either by "pip install readline" or "python setup.py install" and what I got was following behavior:
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  File "/home/dutour/opt/Python-2.7.3/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py", line 1118, in write_pkg_file

    self._write_field(file, 'Metadata-Version', version)

  File "/home/dutour/opt/Python-2.7.3/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py", line 1145, in _write_field

    file.write('%s: %s\n' % (name, self._encode_field(value)))

  File "/home/dutour/opt/Python-2.7.3/lib/python2.7/distutils/dist.py", line 1154, in _encode_field

    if isinstance(value, unicode):

RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded while calling a Python object
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So, the install went into an infinite loop and crashed.
Instead the correct error message that should have been shown at some point is missing .h file.

I am a beginner on Python, I asked on help at python.org and Matthew Dixon Cowles indicated me that I should report the problem here.

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components: Build
messages: 174012
nosy: mathieu37
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: readline problem
type: compile error
versions: Python 2.7

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue16346>
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