anaconda-rl-fix

This repository contains recipes for building the Python interpreter in a proper way to avoid the auto-completion bug, described in this bug report.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure that the X11 headers are installed:

yum install libX11-devel           # on RHEL, CentOS or Fedora
apt-get install libx11-dev         # on Debian or Ubuntu

and the ncurses headers, if you don't plan to compile the ncurses package:

yum install ncurses-devel          # on RHEL, CentOS or Fedora
apt-get install libncursesw5-dev   # on Debian or Ubuntu

Install the conda build package:

conda install conda-build

Clone the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/kbg/anaconda-rl-fix.git

Building the python-2.7.9 package

Build the python-2.7.9_kbg package:

cd anaconda-rl-fix
conda build python-2.7.9

Install this package in a new conda environment "mytest":

conda create -n mytest python=2.7.9_kbg ipython --use-local

Switch to this environment, test the auto-completion in ipython:

source activate mytest
ipython
In [1]: 1.conj<TAB>

You can remove the mytest environment again, using:

source deactivate
conda remove -n mytest --all

The fixed python package can also be installed in the main environment, but you should be carefull if you plan to do so, as it may break conda, if anything goes wrong:

conda install --use-local python=2.7.9_kbg

If you run into problems during the build, you can also activate some additional debug output by editing the file meta.yaml in the python-2.7.9 directory and replacing setup-fixdirs.patch with setup-fixdirs-with-debug-output.patch in the source/patches section, e.g.:

source:
  # ...
  patches:
    - setup-fixdirs-with-debug-output.patch

You might also want to write the text output of the build process into a file for later review (build_python-2.7.9.log in this example):

conda build python-2.7.9 2>&1 | tee build_python-2.7.9.log

Building the python-2.7.9_nc package using a custom ncurses build

Build the ncurses package:

cd anaconda-rl-fix
conda build ncurses

Build the python-2.7.9_nc_kbg package, which uses the previously built ncurses package instead of the system's ncurses library:

conda build python-2.7.9_nc

Install these packages in a new conda environment "mytest":

conda create -n mytest python=2.7.9_nc_kbg ipython --use-local

Additional notes

The Python-3.4.2 packages can be built in the same way as the Python-2.7.9 packages.