Question

brew install python fails with

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'BufferedIOBase'

does anyone have any idea what this means?

the full output is below:

==> Downloading http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.3/Python-2.7.3.tar.bz2
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/python-2.7.3.tar.bz2
==> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.3 --enable-ipv6 --dataroot
==> make
==> make install PYTHONAPPSDIR=/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.3
==> make frameworkinstallextras PYTHONAPPSDIR=/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.3/sha
==> Downloading http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/d/distribute/distribute-0
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/distribute-0.6.30.tar.gz
==> /usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.3/bin/python -s setup.py --no-user-cfg install 
  File "/private/tmp/__UNKNOWN__-iM08/distribute-0.6.30/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 18, in <module>
    import zipfile
  File     "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.3/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/zipfile.py", line 464, in <module>
    class ZipExtFile(io.BufferedIOBase):
 AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'BufferedIOBase'

Answer 1

The folks on the github / homebrew suggested that i delete /usr/local/lib/python2.7/. After doing so, brew install python worked once again.