Re: 'bzr init-repo .' crashes for lack of module bz2. Help, please!

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, David,

Thanks for the reply!

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 11:05:15PM +0000, David De La Harpe Golden wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> >Would somebody help me, please.

> What debian version are you running? Probably lenny (current stable), as 
> etch (current oldstable) is about to EOL.

I've got an old Debian Sarge with a hosed package management system.
That's why I always build from source.

> Firstly, bzr 2.0.2 is currently packaged in  debian lenny-backports.
> http://packages.debian.org/lenny-backports/bzr
> Dunno if 2.0.2->2.0.3 matters much.  But using a nicely packaged 
> backport is likely to be less painful.

> Note 2.0.3 is packaged in debian unstable.

> As regards your error:

> > No module named bz2

> Hmm. Module bz2 is bundled with python since python 2.3
> Can you type "python" to get a python repl, then type "import bz2" to 
> try to import it?

Thanks!  I'd assumed that bz2 was part of bzr (similar name), but it
really is part of Python.  My previous build of Python hadn't built bz2.

So I downloaded Python-2.6.4 this morning and built it.  It failed to
build bz2, the sole diagnostic being:

    Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
    _bsddb             _hashlib           _sqlite3
    _ssl               _tkinter           bsddb185
    bz2                dbm                gdbm
    readline           sunaudiodev
    To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for
    the module's name.

The sole "necessary bit" for bz2 appears to be bz2module.c, which exists
in the Python source tree.  It appears not to have been compiled (there
is no bz2module.o).  There is nothing else helpful in the build
procedure's stdout or stderr.  Any ideas?

> If that fails, there's something broken with your python - though
> presumably you're using the debian packaging of it?

No.  My package manager is totally hosed.  Yes.  My python is broken.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).