Adding Readline Functionality Without Recompiling Python

Question

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and refreshed my Python environment. I installed Python 2.7 from source. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that Setup.dist has the readline line commented out by default - by default, there is no readline support installed. I'm now using the Python interpreter as a REPL enough that the constant ^[[A and ^[[D are very obnoxious.

Can I add readline support quickly, or do I have to actually recompile Python again? It seems like the sort of thing where there should be a quick, sane way to do it, but I don't know such a way.

Answer 1

There's a standalone readline package available, you can install it using setuptools

$ easy_install readline

You might also consider using ipython instead.