Fix "Python ImportError: No module named '_curses'"

README.md

Fix Python ImportError: No module named '_curses'

Python scripts that require the Curses library have been known to throw ImportError: No module named '_curses'. This error occurs when Python was configured and compiled without the libncursesw5-dev package present. You can fix it by re-configuring and re-compiling Python after installing libncursesw5-dev. See the Dockerfile for an example.

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/24zwo4/340_ubuntu_1404_importerror_with_curses/

curses.py

# Will throw an error if Python was configured without libncursesw5-dev
import curses

Dockerfile

FROM ubuntu
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install --assume-yes make wget gcc zlib1g:amd64 zlib1g-dev:amd64

# Uncomment the following line to make 'import curses' work
# RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y libncursesw5-dev

ENV PYTHON_VERSION 3.6.1
RUN wget --quiet https://www.python.org/ftp/python/$PYTHON_VERSION/Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tgz && \
    tar xzvf Python-$PYTHON_VERSION.tgz && \
    cd Python-$PYTHON_VERSION && \
    ./configure && \
    make install

ADD /curses.py /curses.py
CMD python3 curses.py