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:
------------------------------------------------------------------
.
.
.
  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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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@python.org and Matthew Dixon Cowles indicated me that I should report the problem here.

On a Ubuntu system you don’t need to install readline from PyPI: CPython has a readline module, which gets compiled if the headers are available.

That said, the error you report is still strange.  Can you attach the full console output as a text file?

Well, that was the points, the headers were not available.

  Mathieu

On Sunday, December 9, 2012, Éric Araujo wrote:

>
> Éric Araujo added the comment:
>
> On a Ubuntu system you don’t need to install readline from PyPI: CPython
> has a readline module, which gets compiled if the headers are available.
>
> That said, the error you report is still strange.  Can you attach the full
> console output as a text file?
>
> ----------
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org <javascript:;>>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue16346>
> _______________________________________
>

write_pkg_file looks very different now.