Conda-pack breaks spyder

Question

I'm trying to use conda-pack to distribute a conda env to a different offline machine.

Following the steps at https://conda.github.io/conda-pack/ results in most things working (e.g. python, ipython, importing modules).

However, Spyder is not working. When I launch spyder from command prompt it says

This application failed to start because it could not find or 
load the Qt platform plugin "windows" in "".

I looked into some related discussions like Qt 5.1.1: Application failed to start because platform plugin "windows" is missing however I have not found a fix.

My guess is that conda pack is not running conda post link scripts after unpacking. That's required for Qt to work. — Carlos Cordoba, Dec 05 '20 at 23:10

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 03 '20 at 02:32

I haven't found a solution to fix the real problem.

I wanted to try to use conda to install to see if I could fix it.

So I used conda to clone the broken environment so I could work with this cloned copy of the environment. For sanity, the first thing I did after cloning the broken environment was to try to run spyder from command prompt. Somewhat surprisingly Spyder worked!

Apparently creating a clone of the environment fixed the problem!

I imagine this might work for other conda users that see the message

This application failed to start because it could not find or 
load the Qt platform plugin "windows" in "".

even if they were not using conda-pack.

Conda-pack breaks spyder

1 Answers1