[IPython-user] Extreme Ipython frustration blues....

[Fernando Perez]

Hi Rob,

Rob Marino wrote:

> I'm desperately trying to install/use Ipython on win xp. I've followed the 
> installation instructions to the letter, I *cannot* get it to run. I've 
> installed ctypes,breadline and all other necessary packages. Basically, I 
> don't want too much hassle with this at this point as I have 22 zillion 
> other things to do and so while frantically multitasking would like to 
> 'play' somewhat with the ipython interpreter to see if it would be suitable 
> for some interaction I have in mind with twisted. Six million dollar 
> question: How the f@$%^k do you get the beast to run? Obviously I'm either 
> not grasping something extremely fundamental or there's a flaw I know 
> nothing about in the library. For example typing 'ipython' at the command 
> prompt in win xp after install accomplishes precisely nothing...what dumb 
> thing am I doing wrong ? I'm very frustrated by this...

Sorry to hear about these problems.  Typing plain 'ipython' at a terminal 
probably doesn't work because windows does not set up a correct set of paths 
by default.  So the actual 'executable' script ends up somewhere inside the 
python tree, but there should be a shortcut made by the installer in your 
'start' menu.  Does that one produce any different results?  Unfortunately I 
doubt it will, as you seem to be getting an internal python error regardless.

I have never before seen this error you are getting:

> File "C:\Program Files\Python24\Lib\site-packages\IPython\iplib.py", line 
> 707, in __init__ 
> self.dir_stack = [os.getcwd().replace(self.home_dir,'~')] 
> TypeError: expected a character buffer object 

I hope some of our win32 experts might shed some light.

Can you try the following with a plain python interpreter?

 >>> import os
 >>> os.getcwd()
'/home/fperez'
 >>> type(os.getcwd())
<type 'str'>

Also, try inserting before line 707 in IPython/iplib.py something like:

print '*** DBG *** home dir info:',
print str(self.home_dir)
print repr(self.home_dir)
print type(self.home_dir)

This may give me some ideas.

> ....also: I need to install Ipython on a box with a Latin2 keyboard. This 
> generates even more interesting problems..... 

I've heard european keyboards and win-readline don't get along very well, 
unfortunately, but I don't know the issue first hand (I don't use either) so 
I'm not sure how bad it actually is.

> *Help anyone please?* 

We'll try :)

Cheers,

f