Get IPython tab completion for ipdb

Question

I have IPython(0.13.1) and ipdb(0.7) installed, I inserted the line import ipdb;ipdb.set_trace() in my script and ran python my_

Answer 1

As of 2019-11 few things changes so here is what should fix it:

pip install --upgrade ipdb gnureadline ptpython

# Handly to enable ipdb on pytest exceptions
export PYTEST_ADDOPTS='--pdb --pdbcls=IPython.terminal.debugger:Pdb'

Answer 2

I had the same problem on ubuntu 14.04 and got it fixed with:

apt-get install libncurses5-dev

pip install --upgrade readline

Answer 3

I had the same phenomenon on my Mac using ipython==0.13.2 and ipdb==0.7 inside a Python 2.7.5 virtualenv. When I tried to debug, I had the tab completion for the builtins, but not for the variables in the current scope. I discovered, that I had a custom .pdbrc located in my home folder (http://docs.python.org/2/library/pdb.html#id2). After I commented all the stuff out, the tab completion worked again.

I don't know when and why I added this file, but this is what was in there:

# See http://docs.python.org/2/library/pdb.html#id2 for the structure of this file.
import pdb

# 'inspect x' will print the source code for a method, class or function.
alias inspect import inspect;print inspect.getsource(%1)
alias i import inspect;print inspect.getsource(%1)
# 'help x' opens the man-style help viewer from the interpretter on an object
alias help !print help(%1)
alias h !print help(%1)
# For ordinary Python objects, ppo will pretty-print members and their values.
alias ppo pp %1.__dict__
# ppio runs ppo over a sequence of objects
alias ppio pp [a.__dict__ for a in %1]

# This tries to enable tab-completion of some identifiers.
!import rlcompleter
!pdb.Pdb.complete = rlcompleter.Completer(locals()).complete

# Taken from https://gist.github.com/1125049
# There are a couple of edge cases where you can lose terminal
# echo. This should restore it next time you open a pdb.
!import termios, sys
!termios_fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
!termios_echo = termios.tcgetattr(termios_fd)
!termios_echo[3] = termios_echo[3] | termios.ECHO
!termios_result = termios.tcsetattr(termios_fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, termios_echo)

Further research is needed to check what breaks the tab-completion in there...

Answer 4

Does easy_install readline help?

Answer 5

I had the same problem and I fixed it with:

sudo pip install --upgrade ipdb ipython readline

If you don't have readline installed make sure to install libncurses5-dev as @musashi14 suggested.