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What am I doing wrong when installing lxml on Mac OS X 10.8.1?

Asked 2012-09-18T20:41:04.530
8

I'm building lxml on Mac OS X 10.8.1 and Python 2.7.2 and having problems. (I've cloned the Github repository and followed the instructions for Mac OS X here: http://lxml.de/build.html)

It appears something hangs in building libxml2; the following is the tail end of the terminal output:

configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating libxml2.spec
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating include/Makefile
config.status: creating include/libxml/Makefile
config.status: creating doc/Makefile
config.status: creating doc/examples/Makefile
config.status: creating doc/devhelp/Makefile
config.status: creating example/Makefile
config.status: creating python/Makefile
config.status: creating python/tests/Makefile
config.status: creating xstc/Makefile
config.status: creating include/libxml/xmlversion.h
config.status: creating xml2-config
config.status: creating libxml-2.0.pc
config.status: creating libxml-2.0-uninstalled.pc
config.status: creating python/setup.py
config.status: creating config.h
config.status: executing depfiles commands
config.status: executing libtool commands
rm: libtoolT: No such file or directory
Done configuring
make  all-recursive
Making all in include
Making all in libxml
make[3]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
make[3]: Nothing to be done for `all-am'.
Making all in .
  CC     error.lo

[snipped]

  CC     hash.lo
parser.c: In function 'xmlParseInNodeContext':
parser.c:13492: warning: pointer targets in passing argument 1 of 'xmlFindCharEncodingHandler' differ in signedness
  CC     list.lo

[snipped]

  CC     xpointer.lo
xpath.c: In function 'xmlXPathRegisterFuncNS':
xpath.c:4870: warning: ISO C forbids passing argument 4 of 'xmlHashAddEntry2' between function pointer and 'void *'
xpath.c: In function 'xmlXPathFunctionLookupNS':
xpath.c:4951: warning: ISO C forbids assignment betw
python macos installation lxml
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1 Answer

17

This is a bug in libxml2 2.9.

The error you're getting is on this line:

once_control = PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT;

That's illegal code, that just happens to work on linux. PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT can only be used for initialization, not assignment, and there's a specific reason for that: so platforms can define PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT as an aggregate initializer. Which OS X does. From 10.8.1's /usr/include/pthread.h:

#define PTHREAD_ONCE_INIT {_PTHREAD_ONCE_SIG_init, {0}}

It looks like this has been reported to the libxml2 mailing list a few days ago (https://mail.gnome.org/archives/xml/2012-September/msg00036.html), filed in bugzilla two days later (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684024), and fixed the next day (http://git.gnome.org/browse/libxml2/commit/?id=3f6cfbd1d38d0634a2ddcb9a0a13e1b5a2195a5e), so presumably 2.9.1 will not have this problem.

So, here are your options:

Of course you could wait for 2.9.1 to come out.

Alternative, despite what the build page says, the version of libxml2 that comes with Mountain Lion, 2.7.8, is not "horribly outdated"—it's newer than the 2.7.3 version he suggests using. So, you can just skip the --static-deps and use the built-in 2.7.8.

If you do want something newer than 2.7.8, but not as new as the (non-working) 2.9.0, the build page shows how to specify it explicitly, and http://www.xmlsoft.org should have the version history somewhere so you can pick the version you want. For example:

python setup.py build --static-deps \
   --libxml2-version=2.8.0

Or you could manually apply the patch from http://git.gnome.org/browse/libxml2/commit/?id=3f6cfbd1d38d0634a2ddcb9a0a13e1b5a2195a5e and build that manually, or

answered 2012-09-18T23:45:18.563

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