[lxml-dev] install lxml 2.0.5 on Mac OS X Leopard - why is it so hard?

[Kumar McMillan]

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org> wrote:
>
> Well, we make fairly heavy use of xpath (we use it to extract millions
> of records/minute in our ETL system, plus provide default attributes
> in the xml config file), so if it's a problem, I'm sure I'll see
> it. The few tests I've run so far worked fine.

huh, yeah it does seem like you'd see a crash.  Maybe the py25-lxml
port gains some advantages from getting built within the macports
environment somehow.

> Care to provide an
> example that breaks?

unfornately, I don't think I have one, not something that is decoupled
from the app I'm working on anyway.  The app I'm working on makes
heavy use of lxml.html to spider through the web, uses xpath() here
and there, and the test cases use xpaths for assertions.  However, I
see the segfault in strange places.  For example, if I run all tests
at once (I'm using nose) then I usually don't see a segfault.  But if
I run test cases by themselves I will generally see a segfault.  And
if I do, it is a consistent segfault.  Looking at the crash log I can
see that it's on an xpath lookup (I posted this earlier).  However, to
make matters worse, the test cases I can trigger segfaults in
generally do not seem to touch any of the xpath code :/

Nonetheless, all the workarounds I've mentioned stop the segfaults.