Can't set Python3 with installed RobotFramework as Installed framework for RED

[filug]

My setup

• Eclipse: Oxygen Release (4.7.0)
• RED plugin: 0.7.9.2017062909 (installed via Marketplace)
• distro: Debian Stretch
• python3: 3.5.3
• robotframework: 3.0.2 (installed via pip3 install robotframework)

Issue
RED is not able to detect Python3 with robotframework as an interpreter.
Button Window → Preferences → Robot Framework → Installed frameworks → Discover is adding only the following item to the list

name: <unknown> path: /usr/bin

I have no idea how to force RED to use my configuration.

More details & observations

Commands robot or pybot are working correctly

$ robot --version
Robot Framework 3.0.2 (Python 3.5.3 on linux)

also from python3 I can import robot package without any problems

$ python3
Python 3.5.3 (default, Jan 19 2017, 14:11:04) 
[GCC 6.3.0 20170118] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import robot
>>> print(robot.__file__)
/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/robot/__init__.py

When I install robotframework for Python2 (i.e. pip install robotframework) RED is working OK, only Python3 is affected.

[KrzysztofJozefowicz]

Hi
RED is looking for "python" executable in PATH and by whereis , I suppose your Pyt3 has symlink python3 under /usr/bin, Pyt2 is linked as plain "python". This is why it does not autodiscover Pyt3 environment.

You can manually add python folder by following path:
Window → Preferences → Robot Framework → Installed frameworks → Add

Alternatively, you can rename python to python2 and copy python3 to python in /usr/bin

We will discuss internally if we could extend Python search to python3 executable also.

[filug]

@KrzysztofJozefowicz indeed it's working.

You can manually add python folder by following path:
Window → Preferences → Robot Framework → Installed frameworks → Add

Unfortunately because in this menu I can't add link to the binary (i.e. /usr/bin/python3) but only link to the directory (/usr/bin/) I've solved this problem in this way:

1. I've created ~/tools/red-workaround,
2. with the symlink ~/tools/red-workaround/python to the /usr/bin/python3,
3. and via menu Window → Preferences → Robot Framework → Installed frameworks → Add directory ~/tools/red-workaround was added to the RED.

With this configuration RED is working as expected, nevertheless workaround is quite annoying and must be executed by each developer manually, so

We will discuss internally if we could extend Python search to python3 executable also.

would be a nice feature.

[KrzysztofJozefowicz]

Good, let's make it an enhancement to look for python2 and python3 apart from python. Untill python4, we will be covered.

[aks1589]

Thanks @filug and @KrzysztofJozefowicz !!

[osde8info]

thanks @filug the symlink python3 -> python workaround for the eclipse red python3 problem worked for me too but i had to ignore warnings about all librarys being broken and only after running my suite did all the warnings disappear

[luisxiaomai]

Hope Python search to python3 executable can be supported asap, it will help us a lot.
@KrzysztofJozefowicz , thanks.

[michalanglart]

fixed in 0.8.5

[manosnoam]

Still seeing this error on 0.8.11 - when using Python 3.6 with robotframework 3:

If switching to Python2, it's working fine.

[modrz]

Hi,

Can you check following commands in terminal?

python3
import robot
from robot import version
version.get_full_version()

[manosnoam]

It seems to happen due to multiple versions of python3, where the default (python 3.4) does not contain robot package, as I added robot to python36 only (pip3.6 install robotframework).

I fixed it by changing the default python3 from 3.4 to 3.6:

$ python3
    Python 3.4.9 (default, Aug 14 2018, 21:28:57)
    [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-28)] on linux
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import robot
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
    ImportError: No module named 'robot'

$ ls -lh /usr/bin/python3
   lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root  9 Dec  5 16:35 /usr/bin/python3 -> python3.4

$ sudo mv /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/_python3
$ sudo cp /usr/bin/python3.6 /usr/bin/python3

$ python3
    Python 3.6.6 (default, Jan 26 2019, 16:53:05)
    [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-36)] on linux
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import robot
    >>> from robot import version
    >>> version.get_full_version()
    '3.1.1 (Python 3.6.6 on linux)'