ipython -pylab no longer plots interactively on 0.10.1

[dirjud]

I am using ipython on Fedora Linux 13. They recently updated from 0.10 to 0.10.1 and interactive matplotlib plotting no longer works when using the -pylab option. I posted an issue on Fedora's bug tracker as well at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=663823.

Here is how to reproduce it:

$ ipython -pylab

In [1]: import pylab

In [2]: pylab.plot([0,1],[1,0])
Out[2]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D object at 0x255d390>]

Historically after running this command a matplotlib plot would have popped up,
but it no longer does. So if you then run pylab.show(), it will pop up, but it
blocks and is not interactive as before. Then when you close the plot that
popped up, it continues to block. It is hung. After waiting a long time, I hit
Ctrl-C, and I get the following message:

In [3]: pylab.show()
^CERROR: An unexpected error occurred while tokenizing input
The following traceback may be corrupted or invalid
The error message is: ('EOF in multi-line statement', (332, 0))

---

KeyboardInterrupt Traceback (most recent call last)

/home/lane/ in ()

/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_gtk.pyc in
show(mainloop)
76 if mainloop and gtk.main_level() == 0 and
77 len(Gcf.get_all_fig_managers())>0:
---> 78 gtk.main()
79
80 def new_figure_manager(num, _args, *_kwargs):

KeyboardInterrupt:

In [4]:

When I revert back to 0.10, it works as expected.

[dirjud]

I just cloned the repo, and the master branch works as expected. The 0.10.2 branch is broken the same way the 0.10.1 release is broken.

[fperez]

Yes, unfortunately we still have a small bug there, though it's specific to the GTKAgg backend.

If you configure matplotlib to use any of these backends:

backend      : TkAgg    # the default backend
backend      : QtAgg    # the default backend
backend      : Qt4Agg    # the default backend
backend      : WXAgg    # the default backend

by putting one of these lines in your ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc, it will work fine.

I hope to get some time in a few days to fix this annoyance and make a clean 0.10.2 release, sorry about the problem.