No.  You wrote this: “Here's a snippet of what I have in my startup file: [code with if 'libedit' in readline.__doc__ complication] While obviously this can be handled, it seems like an unnecessary burden on users.”  My message addresses this: using read_init_file removes the need for this complication (the four lines with the in test).  IOW, I was suggesting that we could add a mention of libedit in the readline docs and advise that people use read_init_file, then close this bug.