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.

Answer 2

You can fix the problem on Mac OS X Mavericks and Yosemite by doing the following:

cd ~/.matplotlib/
fc-list  # Should take a couple minutes.

After fc-list finishes running you will be able to import the package using import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. This is the github issue with the solution. It seems the bug is related to the font cache.

Answer 3

I figured out what was happening. Hopefully the solution is useful to others. In the /usr/X11/lib folder there was a symbolic link for the directory that was pointing back to itself. This appears to have created an infinite loop. When I removed the link, the import worked.