IDLE crashes selecting Preferences menu with OS X ActiveState Tcl/Tk 8.5.12.1

[DavidPietz]

BPO	15853
Nosy	@rhettinger, @tiran, @ned-deily, @serwy, @bitdancer, @asvetlov
Files	GRAB_IDLEquitUnexpectedly.tiff: Screenshot of complete Problem Report for IDLE configDialog.diff issue15853.patch patch_idle_issue_15853.sh: Shell script to install IDLE patch for 3.3.0, 3.2.3 and 2.7.3

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

Show more details

GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/ned-deily'
closed_at = <Date 2012-10-22.22:37:21.026>
created_at = <Date 2012-09-03.00:27:22.230>
labels = ['OS-mac', 'expert-IDLE', 'type-crash']
title = 'IDLE crashes selecting Preferences menu with OS X ActiveState Tcl/Tk 8.5.12.1'
updated_at = <Date 2012-12-27.03:00:06.021>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/DavidPietz'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2012-12-27.03:00:06.021>
actor = 'ned.deily'
assignee = 'ned.deily'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2012-10-22.22:37:21.026>
closer = 'ned.deily'
components = ['IDLE', 'macOS']
creation = <Date 2012-09-03.00:27:22.230>
creator = 'David.Pietz'
dependencies = []
files = ['27108', '27539', '27617', '28447']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 15853
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 29.0
messages = ['169732', '169733', '169739', '169743', '169744', '169745', '169748', '169749', '169852', '169863', '172273', '172277', '172406', '172466', '172715', '172725', '172737', '172753', '172908', '173134', '173310', '173431', '173432', '173433', '173566', '173568', '173569', '177958', '178265']
nosy_count = 11.0
nosy_names = ['rhettinger', 'wordtech', 'christian.heimes', 'ned.deily', 'roger.serwy', 'r.david.murray', 'asvetlov', 'python-dev', 'David.Pietz', 'pedrommeirelles', 'Vance.Maverick']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'crash'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue15853'
versions = ['Python 2.7', 'Python 3.2', 'Python 3.3', 'Python 3.4']

[DavidPietz]

Currently I am trying to edit idle preferences so I can edit a script which appends a log of Idle activity that I may review for study purposes.
I could not really interpret much of the crash logs in console but there seem to be two types of memory errors. I have also seen a variety of situations crash Idle and it is hampering my study as my text uses 3.x not the installed 2.x on my Macbook Pro. As I saw an issue track mentioning os x 10.6, I upgraded to Mountain Lion, os x 10.8 but the behavior is the same. This is my first post.

[bitdancer]

Can you report a specific error and a recipe to reproduce it?

[ned-deily]

The crash on opening Preferences is an unresolved regression with OS X ActiveTcl 8.5.12.1, the current ActiveTcl Community Edition, that causes Tk to crash when selecting the IDLE Preferences.. command. The regression was also in ActiveState 8.5.12 but not in 8.5.11.1. The crash appears to be related to the Tk crash-on-copy problem documented in bpo-15574.

Until the problem is resolved, if you have access to ActiveTcl 8.5.11.1 (ActiveState only makes the most recent version available to Community Edition users), you can install that. Otherwise, you could either temporarily "deactivate" the ActiveState Tk by renaming it, for example, after quitting IDLE:

sudo mv /Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework /Library/Frameworks/Tk_disabled

This will revert to the Apple-supplied system Tk, which has some critical bugs in 10.8 Mountain Lion (it's totally unusable for IDLE in 10.6) but might be OK for your usage or, at least, for updating Preferences.

To "reactivate" ActiveTk, rename it back:

sudo mv /Library/Frameworks/Tk_disabled /Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework

Once you've made some preferences changes, it is also possible to manually edit the configuration files created in ~/.idlerc.

I will update this issue with a cross-reference to an Tcl/Tk issue when available.

[DavidPietz]

r.david.murray- Thank You for your inquiry.
My recipe for this crash is (1) simply to start IDLE 3.2.3 in either Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion (2) click on the Bold "IDLE" menu in the menu bar and (3) click on menu item "preferences". At this point a dialog called "Problem Report for IDLE" appears with gobs of technical data details below a message "IDLE quit unexpectedly". I copied what I thought might be most specific. (The suggested 'click to reopen' does not work)
I hope this data from the details section is informative even if it is not the only exception type or code I have seen related to IDLE in similar conditions:

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000024

VM Regions Near 0x24:
-->
__TEXT 0000000100000000-0000000100001000 [ 4K] r-x/rwx SM=COW /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/Python.app/Contents/MacOS/Python

Application Specific Information:
Performing @selector(preferences:) from sender NSMenuItem 0x101b46a90

[ned-deily]

David, can you verify that you do have ActiveTcl 8.5.12 (.0 or .1) installed and that the problem no longer occurs if you disable ActiveTk by moving it as described above? When Preference is failing, the following Terminal shell command:

grep TK_PATCH_LEVEL /Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/Current/tkConfig.sh 

should output:
TK_PATCH_LEVEL='.12'

[DavidPietz]

ned,
That is exactly the output I received when I reverted to the ActiveState version, it failed and I ran your grep.
Thank You for your interest.
djp

[DavidPietz]

I thank you, gentlemen, for your kind attention to my issue. I hope it helps everyone in the long run.
I, myself, became underwhelmed with these results of successfully opening preferences. I had been expecting to have a "|Startup|-|Shells open with command|text box to put a script in for append-logging my Python study in IDLE which follows Head First Python using 3.x- and its not in preferences for IDLE like it is in Terminal!
Well, I guess I have some research to do on that matter.
Thanks again. It was very gratifying to have my first issue responded to so quickly and intelligently!

[ned-deily]

Hmm, sorry, I don't know of an easy fool-proof way to automatically log everything you type in IDLE. But it's pretty easy to manually save the contents of the IDLE shell window at the end: with the keyboard focus on the Python Shell window, select the File -> Save menu option. Good luck with exploring!

[rhettinger]

I'm observed this happening on a number of machines at my client's site. It started about three weeks ago and has not stopped (even with fresh installs of Py2.7.3 and ActiveTCL).

I've not been able to figure-out why it affects some machines and not others. It can happen on 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8. I've hypothesized that some boxes have different XCode updates than others.

[ned-deily]

The problem is a regression in the latest version of ActiveTcl 8.5 for OS X, specifically 8.5.12.1 (and I believe the previous version 8.5.12.0). It has nothing directly to do with Python or how you might build Python other than whether _tkinter.so dynamically links with /Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Verisons/8.5 and /Library/Framework/Tk.framework/Verisons/8.5 (the locations where ActiveTcl install) as opposed to /System/Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/... and /System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/..., the Apple-supplied versions. And, if so, which version of ActiveTcl you have installed. The python.org 64-bit Pythons are vulnerable, the 32-bit-obly ones are not because they link with Tcl/Tk 8.4.

Unfortunately, ActiveState only makes available the most recent version of ActiveTcl on its Community Edition pages, so, unless you have access to a copy of an older version of ActiveTcl (like 8.5.11.1, the previous version), you're kind of stuck with the behavior, unless you remove ActiveTcl 8.5 and revert to Apple's Tk which is vulnerable to other crashes that have been fixed in ActiveState's (and is totally broken in OS X 10.6). Or you use the 32-bit installer and Tcl/Tk 8.4. Or you build your own version of Tcl/Tk 8.5 (I've stared looking at that). By the way, ActiveState's own ActivePython 2.7 also crashes the same way when using 8.5.12.x. I've pinged the Tcl Mac mailing list. Unless there's an immediate fix, I'll see what I can find in Tk.

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.tcl.mac/7080