Fatal error using pydoc

[opstad]

BPO	32488
Nosy	@ronaldoussoren, @ned-deily

^{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 = None
closed_at = <Date 2018-01-03.19:17:47.782>
created_at = <Date 2018-01-03.17:49:03.782>
labels = ['OS-mac', 'type-crash']
title = 'Fatal error using pydoc'
updated_at = <Date 2018-01-03.19:17:47.780>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/opstad'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2018-01-03.19:17:47.780>
actor = 'ned.deily'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2018-01-03.19:17:47.782>
closer = 'ned.deily'
components = ['Demos and Tools', 'macOS']
creation = <Date 2018-01-03.17:49:03.782>
creator = 'opstad'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 32488
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['309422', '309426', '309429']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['ronaldoussoren', 'ned.deily', 'opstad']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'works for me'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'crash'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue32488'
versions = ['Python 3.6']

[opstad]

I'm running 3.6.4 on Mac OS X 10.13.2, bash shell. Doing:

$ pydoc modules

causes:

Please wait a moment while I gather a list of all available modules...

Fatal Python error: PyThreadState_Get: no current thread
Abort trap: 6

Reproduced this several times with the same result.

[opstad]

I think this was my mistake; when I used pydoc3 instead of pydoc it ran to completion. Please feel free to close this; sorry for the noise.

[ned-deily]

Glad you solved the immediate problem. Under the covers, pydoc (either pydoc2 or pydoc3) tries to import all the modules associated with the interpreter instance it's running under - from the Python standard library plus any additional vendor-supplied modules and and any you install (with pip et al). It seems likely that the Python 2 instance associated with the "pydoc" on your shell path (not "pydoc3" and Python 3) has at least one broken module installed. It may be a case of a third-party module being compiled against one version of Python 2.7 (say, a Homebrew version) and being executed with another (say the Apple-supplied system Python 2.7). See, for example, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35640529/what-does-fatal-python-error-pythreadstate-get-no-current-thread-mean