sage -gdb doesn't work

[mmezzarobba]

$ ./sage -gdb
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ SageMath Version 6.9.beta2, Release Date: 2015-08-13               │
│ Type "notebook()" for the browser-based notebook interface.        │
│ Type "help()" for help.                                            │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Warning: this is a prerelease version, and it may be unstable.     ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
gdb: /home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/libncurses.so.5: no version information available (required by gdb)
gdb: /home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/libncurses.so.5: no version information available (required by gdb)
gdb: /home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/libtinfo.so.5: no version information available (required by gdb)
Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: Unable to get the locale encoding
  File "/home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/python/encodings/__init__.py", line 123
    raise CodecRegistryError,\
                            ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Current thread 0x00007f97dbdc0780 (most recent call first):

$ ./sage -t --gdb src/sage/rings/integer.pyx 
too many failed tests, not using stored timings
exec gdb -x "$SAGE_LOCAL/bin/sage-gdb-commands" --args python "$SAGE_LOCAL/bin/sage-runtests" --serial --timeout=0 --stats_path=/home/marc/.sage/timings2.json --optional=mpir,python2,sage,scons src/sage/rings/integer.pyx
gdb: /home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/libncurses.so.5: no version information available (required by gdb)
gdb: /home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/libncurses.so.5: no version information available (required by gdb)
gdb: /home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/libtinfo.so.5: no version information available (required by gdb)
Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: Unable to get the locale encoding
  File "/home/marc/co/sage/local/lib/python/encodings/__init__.py", line 123
    raise CodecRegistryError,\
                            ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Current thread 0x00007fe6c331e780 (most recent call first):
(exit 250) 

[jdemeyer]

I think this is an inconsistency between the system python and Sage's python. Does ./sage -i gdb solve your problem?

[mmezzarobba]

Replying to jdemeyer:

I think this is an inconsistency between the system python and Sage's python. Does ./sage -i gdb solve your problem?

It does, thanks! (I really hate how sage always needs its own version of everything...)

[dimpase]

can this be closed?

[mmezzarobba]

Replying to dimpase:

can this be closed?

I'd say no: even if there is a workaround, it is an issue with sage...

[dimpase]

I'd say it just needs to be documented properly. Indeed, gdb is intimately connected to gcc, and supplying gcc, but no gdb, won't fly...

[mkoeppe]

Let's close this as outdated