Question

I’m making a Regular Expression testing tool for work. I would like it to be a simple AUI application, but after transferring what seems to me to be the core of an AUI application from the demo to my code, it crashes on startup. I can only see the wxPython log window for a fraction of a second before it disappears, and the code produces no errors in the console.

Here is the troublesome frame. If I comment out all the _mgr lines, the application runs just fine.

class RegexTesterFrame(wx.Frame):
    def __init__(self):
        wx.Frame.__init__(
            self, None, -1, 'Regex tester', (100, 100),
            (400, 400), wx.DEFAULT_FRAME_STYLE
        )

        self.initialize_components()
        self.CreateStatusBar()

    def initialize_components(self):
        self._mgr = wx.aui.AuiManager()
        self._mgr.SetManagedWindow(self)

        self._perspectives = []

        self._mgr.AddPane(
            wx.CheckBox(self, -1, 'test'),
            wx.aui.AuiPaneInfo().Name('Test pane').Caption('Test caption').Top()
        )

        self._mgr.Update()

        self.Bind(wx.EVT_CLOSE, self.on_close)

    def on_close(self, event):
        self._mgr.UnInit()
        del self._mgr
        self.Destroy()

Here is the full code (~100 lines): http://pastebin.com/xZS2g1fq

And here is the demo I’m working from (LARGE): http://pastebin.com/G26BMYZx

I’m curious about two things – why does the application crash, and why do I get no error output when wxPython applications crash in general.

Answer 1

I’ve struggled with this since yesterday, but as usual, the minute I ask the question on StackOverflow I figure it out. First of all I got the application to output error information in a message box instead of stderr:

def main():
    try:
        app = RegexTesterApp(True)
        app.MainLoop()
    except:
        import traceback
        xc = traceback.format_exception(*sys.exc_info())
        wx.MessageBox(''.join(xc))

Then the error revealed that wx.aui was a module that I hadn’t imported. Importing it fixed the crash.