IDAPython on OSX

Question

I wrote a simple IDAPython script that relies on some non-standard Python library. I'm able to build the library on Windows and run the script in IDA without issue.

When I try to do this on OSX, IDA complains that the 3rd-party library doesn't exist. I notice that from the shell on my Mac, the version of Python I'm using is 2.7.x, but IDA says the Python version its using is 2.6.x.

Doing sys.executable in the IDA window and from my shell both seem to print /usr/bin/python.

Where is this 2.6 python binary? Or, more importantly, how should I properly install this 3rd party library so that IDAPython can see it and use it?

Answer 1

I've run into the same issue - everything worked fine on Windows, with oddness on OSX.

As Igor mentions in the comment above, running sys.path in the IDA interpreter showed that although the default Python interpreter for the OS (/usr/bin/python) was 2.7, IDA is using python 2.6 (seems OSX has python 2.5 through 2.75 installed, because... reasons/masochism/other).

Invoking the pip installer with Python-2.6, and afterwards running pip-2.6 to install your libraries should fix the issue, although it would be nice if IDA used the system default Python interpreter in this instance.