Matplotlib issue on OS X ("ImportError: cannot import name _thread")

python macos python-2.7 matplotlib python-dateutil
Dolan Antenucci picture Dolan Antenucci · Dec 24, 2014 · Viewed 34.3k times · Source

At some point in the last few days, Matplotlib stopped working for me on OS X. Here's the error I get when trying to import matplotlib:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/my/path/to/script/my_script.py", line 15, in <module>
    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/pyplot.py", line 34, in <module>
    from matplotlib.figure import Figure, figaspect
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/figure.py", line 40, in <module>
    from matplotlib.axes import Axes, SubplotBase, subplot_class_factory
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/axes/__init__.py", line 4, in <module>
    from ._subplots import *
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/axes/_subplots.py", line 10, in <module>
    from matplotlib.axes._axes import Axes
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/axes/_axes.py", line 22, in <module>
    import matplotlib.dates as _  # <-registers a date unit converter
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/dates.py", line 126, in <module>
    from dateutil.rrule import (rrule, MO, TU, WE, TH, FR, SA, SU, YEARLY,
  File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/dateutil/rrule.py", line 14, in <module>
    from six.moves import _thread
ImportError: cannot import name _thread

The only system change I can think of was the Apple-forced NTP update and maybe some permission changes I did in /usr/local to get Brew working again.

I tried reinstalling both Matplotlib and Python-dateutil via Pip, but this did not help. Also tried a reboot. I'm running Python 2.7.6, which is located in /usr/bin/python. I'm running Yosemite (OS X 10.10.1).

Answer

wil3 picture wil3 · Dec 24, 2014 
sudo pip uninstall python-dateutil
sudo pip install python-dateutil==2.2

I had the same error message this afternoon as well, although I did recently upgrade to Yosemite. I'm not totally sure I understand why reverting dateutil to a previous version works for me, but since running the above I'm having no trouble (I generally use pyplot inline in an ipython notebook).

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