Matplotlib crashing on Mac OS X with solution

[krisdigital]

I read you do not officially support OS X, but since it is mentioned in the Readme, maybe someone finds it useful or I can make a pull request.

OS X is crashing because of matplotlib, which can be avoided by setting the TkAgg backend explicitly according to http://stackoverflow.com/a/34109240/965686

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("TkAgg")
from matplotlib import pyplot as pet

I do not know if this changes the behaviour of other systems, but I can confirm that it is working on OS X with a Homebrew Python installation.

[ValeryToda]

...Same here and same Stackoverflow source. I had to insert the following lines:

from sys import platform as sys_pf
if sys_pf == 'darwin':
    import matplotlib
    matplotlib.use("TkAgg")

at the top of the file

sms-tools/software/models_interface/models_GUI.py

to get rid of the crash.

[tardate]

nice. that works. Suggest a pull request would be a great idea.

The specific error this fixed for me was:

$ python models_GUI.py
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSApplication _setup:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fedcb3a0830'

[DavidAntliff]

For completeness, you can also create this file, to avoid a code change (which may or may not be preferable):

$ mkdir -p ~/.matplotlib
$ echo "backend: TkAgg" > ~/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc

[xserra]

Solved, so closing.

[mjspeck]

Why is the solution to this to use TkAgg instead of macosx for the backend?

[janosh]

@xserra I don't think this is solved. I'm still running into this issue with matplotlib v3.0.2 installed into a miniconda environment on macOS:

conda list matplotlib
# packages in environment at /usr/local/miniconda3/envs/te:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
matplotlib                3.0.2                 py36_1001    conda-forge
matplotlib-base           3.0.2           py36hf043ca5_1001    conda-forge

Attempting

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
plt.plot(range(10))

throws the following exception

python[35172:6260598] *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSApplication _setup:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fccc5e0a500'
*** First throw call stack:
(
        0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff2f3c9ecd __exceptionPreprocess + 256
        1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff5b481720 objc_exception_throw + 48
        2   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff2f447275 -[NSObject(NSObject) __retain_OA] + 0
        3   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff2f36bb40 ___forwarding___ + 1486
        4   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff2f36b4e8 _CF_forwarding_prep_0 + 120
        5   libtk8.6.dylib                      0x0000000121d0b134 TkpInit + 324
        6   libtk8.6.dylib                      0x0000000121c630ce Initialize + 2622
        7   _tkinter.cpython-36m-darwin.so      0x0000000121a8ca46 _tkinter_create + 1174
        ...

If I instead run the following, everything works fine.

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("TkAgg")
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
plt.plot(range(10))
plt.show()