Compiling readline 5.0 on OS X
Since Python on Tiger (and also Panther) is missing full readline support, we need to build readline ourselves and rebuild Python. To build readline on Tiger follow the normal configure/make/install dance, with one exception:
curl ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline/readline-5.0.tar.gz
tar xzf readline-5.0.tar.gz
cd readline-5.0
./configure
On Tiger you need to do the following extra step:
cd shlib
mv Makefile Makefile.backup
sed -e 's/-dynamic/-dynamiclib/' Makefile.backup > Makefile
cd ..
Now run make then install it to the /usr/local directory - which you should
already have or will have created.
make
sudo make install
An optional step is to move the current libreadline out of the way and
symlink to our newly built version:
sudo rm /usr/lib/libreadline*
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libreadline* /usr/lib/
On Panther you will most likely not see libreadline at all and on Tiger it
will be a symlink to /usr/lib/libedit.dylib. That's all it takes to get some GNU readline love on OS X :)