I have been having trouble getting Mercurial running on my Mac. Basically, I have been getting this error message:

ImportError: dlopen(/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/mercurial/osutil.so, 2): no suitable image found. Did find: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/mercurial/osutil.so: mach-o, but wrong architecture

So, by chance, today I found out that if I use an account that is different from the one I normally use, Mercurial actually ran. Since this wouldn’t make any sense if the installation didn’t work, the installation must have been actually working, and the problem I had been experiencing must have been the result of incorrect user-specific configuration.

I did a little investigation and it turned out that this line in my .bash_profile was the culprit:

export VERSIONER_PYTHON_PREFER_32_BIT=yes

I have no idea why I had this line or what put it there (or whether I put it there myself and if so why). But now I’ve had it disabled and Mercurial is finally running…

This means getting Pidgin running will now be a distinct possibility…