IDLE not working on RedHat 9

[David MacQuigg]

Correction to my previous post:
--------
The dependency problem was a beta-build problem only and should be
resolved in the Red Hat distribution.
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Other problems in the Red Hat rpm's remain, however.  I wish I could
be more specific about what I did to fix the problem in the original
post of this thread, but so much has changed since then...   I believe
you will see the problem (IDLE won't start) in any fresh install of
RedHat 8 or 9.

I reported the problem to Red Hat, but got only an automatic response.
 The problem (in my view) is that we have a crack between the
developers and the distributors (Red Hat and possibly others).  The
developers are contributing their efforts for free, so we probably
need to lean more on Red Hat.

>From the developers point-of-view:
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You have installed Python 2.3 from the *tarball*, right?
What kind of package dependency did you expect???

Yes, packagers should be aware that they need header files
to compile things. Any packager worth her money will know
that, and will know how to obtain header files.

On the resulting binary packages, ... It has always been this way, and
always will be; nothing has ever fallen in a crack.
...
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>From the distributors point-of-view:
( I have to make up something here, since I got nothing but an
automatic response from Red Hat.)
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How the hell are we supposed to know that something called 'idle'
buried in our Python package doesn't work.  We did test the package. 
The python interpreter passed all our tests.  There are no
dependencies not listed in the package.
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What would make the job easier for the distributor is a test script to
be run after the python rpm is installed.  This could run every module
and report those that don't work.  This script should be part of the
distribution, so users can run it and find problems that occur in an
environment that Red Hat did not anticpate.

Just a suggestion.

- Dave