spyder2 crashes upon launch when pygtk2 is installed

[nonamedotc]

Description of your problem

I maintain the spyder package for Fedora. This issue is about launching spyder (python 2 version) on Fedora 26.

If I have pygtk2 installed in my system, spyder (python2 version) crashes upon launch. If I remove pygtk2 package, I am able to launch spyder (python 2 version) without any issues.

[test@f26-xfce Desktop]$ rpm -qa pygtk2
pygtk2-2.24.0-16.fc26.x86_64

[test@f26-xfce Desktop]$ spyder
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Install pygtk2 from the repositories.
2. Launch spyder from terminal or from menu.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

Expected: Spyder (py 2 version) should launch

Observed: Segmentation fault.

Versions and main components

• Spyder Version: 3.2.2, 3.2.3
  This issue was also observed in the older versions of spyder but are now not relevant.

• Python Version: 2.7.13

• Qt Version: 5.7.1

• PyQt Version: 5.8.1

• Operating system: Fedora 26 x86_64

Dependencies

IPython >=4.0;<6.0:  5.3.0 (OK)
cython >=0.21     :  None (NOK)
jedi >=0.9.0      :  0.10.2 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0   :  4.2.0 (OK)
numpy >=1.7       :  1.12.1 (OK)
pandas >=0.13.1   :  0.20.1 (OK)
psutil >=0.3      :  5.0.1 (OK)
pycodestyle >=2.3 :  2.3.1 (OK)
pyflakes >=0.5.0  :  1.5.0 (OK)
pygments >=2.0    :  2.2.0 (OK)
pylint >=0.25     :  1.7.2 (OK)
qtconsole >=4.2.0 :  4.2.1 (OK)
rope >=0.9.4      :  0.10.3 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6    :  1.6.3 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3     :  None (NOK)

Python3 version of spyder is not affected.

[ccordoba12]

Thanks for reporting. We'll take a look at this bug in 3.2.4

[nonamedotc]

Thanks! Please let me know if you need more information (trace, etc.) and/or if you need someone to do some testing.

[rlaverde]

I tried to reproduce it in debian, but installing python-gtk2 doesn't make spyder crash, I think It is a fedora issue.

Please let me know if you need more information (trace, etc.)

Maybe the core dumped, I could give a try tracing the bug (although segmentations faults are hard to trace)

Qt Version: 5.7.1
PyQt Version: 5.8.1

Maybe different versions of qt and pyqt could cause the error. If It cause a wrong detection of the qt version; in some places we check the specific pyqt version to use some classes/functions that are only available in some newer versions of the qt. (although that will be a really unlikely)

[nonamedotc]

spyder_launch_strace.txt

I could only generate strace for the crash (attached). If you can tell me how I can go about generating coredump, I can try.

As for mismatch between Qt and PyQt, I tried the same spyder version in Fedora 27 where both are at 5.9.x. I get the same segmentation fault. So, I don't think this is the issue but, of course, I could be wrong.

[rlaverde]

Thanks for the strace, Now I have an idea of how could be the error:

It looks like an incompatibility between pygtk2 and gtk3 (the error is raised when trying to read a translation file of gtk3)

Looking at pygtk2, It looks like It haven't been maintained in a long time, (and not gtk3 support was developed)
http://www.pygtk.org/news.html
https://git.gnome.org//browse/pygtk/

I think this bug doesn't affect only spyder, other applications could be affected

Maybe not setting application style to gtk fix the bug https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/blob/master/spyder/app/mainwindow.py#L2537 (I don't know if that is still needed to fix #2036)

[ccordoba12]

I think it's still needed, yes. But we could try to import pygtk2 before applying that, and (if it's present) avoid the change in theme.

[nonamedotc]

If you make the change, I can test it from git and report back.

[ccordoba12]

@rlaverde, please open a PR for this so that @nonamedotc can test it on his end.

[rlaverde]

@nonamedotc could you test if #5335 fix the error?

[nonamedotc]

spyder_launch_strace_2.txt

Still segfaults when pygtk2 is installed (strace attached).

I made the changes to the mainwindow.py in spyder 3.2.3 released tarball to test this. Would you prefer that I test this master instead?

[rlaverde]

Looking at the strace it still raises the same error, maybe It's something about the console style, although I'm not sure, I'll try to reproduce it in a virtualbox and debug it more.

[nonamedotc]

Hello there! I was looking at this again and I get the same crash with even with 3.2.6. Have any of you had a chance to take a look at this? I can provide the strace again if needed.