[Python-Dev] 2.6.9 readline [Was: OS X 10.9 Mavericks -> 2.7.6/3.3.3 updates needed] (original) (raw)

Ned Deily nad at acm.org
Thu Oct 24 22:12:55 CEST 2013

In article <20131024094436.230220bf at anarchist>, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

On Oct 24, 2013, at 02:11 AM, Ned Deily wrote: >I don't know where any other potential 2.7.6 or 3.3.3 issues stand at this >point. But I'd like Benjamin and Georg to propose an aggressive schedule so >we can get these fixes out there. Does this problem affect 2.6? 2.6.9 final is scheduled for Monday, so if there's something we need to get in before then, please let me know asap.

Yes, this problem also affects 2.6. There are some mitigating factors. The support for libedit on OS X is only enabled when building for an OS X 10.5 or later ABI because in earlier releases, the readline emulation of libedit was judged too buggy. In 2.6 as is also the case in 2.7, when building from source, ./configure defaults to using a 10.4 ABI unless certain universal build options are selected or the user explicitly sets MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 or higher when running configure. With the default 10.4 setting, readline.so fails to build so there is no crash - no readline features, either. Also, if one supplies a version of GNU readline (which Apple does not ship) as many people do, there is also no crash.

The 2.7 change of Issue18458 (http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/1e03fd72e116) depends on some previous 2.7-only changes in Modules/readline.c so it does not apply cleanly to 2.6. However, there aren't that many other earlier changes to 2.7 readline that are not in 2.6 and, for the most part, they have to do with fixing memory leaks, including some introduced by using newer versions of GNU readline, and I didn't see any new features. Copying the current 2.7 tip of readline.c over to the current tip of 2.6 builds cleanly on 10.9.
test_readline passes and the simple history scrolling seems to work without crashing. I'd recommend either doing nothing or backporting everything.

-- Ned Deily, nad at acm.org

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list