import matplotlib.pyplot hangs

Question

I\'m trying to get matplotlib up and running on OS X 10.8.4. I\'ve installed matplotlib and the dependencies (libping, freetype, numpy, scipy). I am able to import matplotli

Answer 1

I was having the same problem on Linux.

Turned out matplotlib was having some issues figuring out the GUI backend to use.

Explicitly saying it to use Tkinter background - which it does by default, using the following command resolved the issue:

%matplotlib tk

This followed by import

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

worked as expected.