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I've run into numerous problems when attempting to update Spyder from 4.2.5 (which is what installs with the most recent Anaconda install) to 5.1.5 in Anaconda.

The advice provided on Spyder startup during version checking:

conda update conda
conda update anaconda
conda install spyder=5.1.5

does NOT work.

After some searching around, I did find a stack overflow question with an answer from a Spyder Maintainer with the following instructions:

conda remove spyder
conda remove python-language-server
conda update anaconda
conda install spyder=5.1.5

This seems to actually work, but then seemed to remove some common modules/packages as well, like matplotlib. Those are easy enough to reinstall (conda install matplotlib), but after that running matplotlib would cause Spyder to restart the Kernel every time, PLUS no plots were produced.

A different question provided the advice to downgrade the version of freetype from 2.11.0 to 2.10.4, which seemed to resolve that issue (downgrading Matplotlib seemed to be unnecessary). I'm afraid of what other issues I may encounter? I'm attempting to teach Python to 70 or so undergraduate students, and it's very difficult to assist when upgrades break things this bad.

Is there an easier/cleaner way to upgrade Spyder to 5.1.5 on Anaconda that I haven't come across yet?

RNGHatesMe
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  • Also, if you have some time to spare, we'd love to hear your experiences on teaching Python with Spyder and how we could improve on that space. We have community calls the first Wednesday of every month, which are announced on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Spyder_IDE), in case you want to attend. – Carlos Cordoba Nov 16 '21 at 17:40
  • Thanks, I definitely will try, though I have a lecture AND a lab to teach on Wednesdays. – RNGHatesMe Nov 17 '21 at 19:53
  • Nice! Hope you can make it, it'd be really valuable to us. – Carlos Cordoba Nov 17 '21 at 21:46

2 Answers2

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(Spyder maintainer here) You said

Is there an easier/cleaner way to upgrade Spyder to 5.1.5 on Anaconda that I haven't come across yet?

Unfortunately, there isn't. This update was particularly hard because we had to drop some dependencies which became unmaintained and use others instead. However, the problem with Matplotlib crashing should be solved now (i.e. there's no need to downgrade freetype to fix it).

I'm attempting to teach Python to 70 or so undergraduate students, and it's very difficult to assist when upgrades break things this bad.

In that case, I strongly recommend you to use our Windows and macOS installers, which you can find here and follow our instructions on how to use other Python packages that don't come with them. I think that would be far more simpler for your students to follow than using Spyder directly through Anaconda.

Carlos Cordoba
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    I appreciate the recommendation, however one of the things I've been trying to introduce is environments and package management. To be honest, package management in Python is a nightmare for novice programmers, and the simpler I can make it, the better. I prefer using conda to PIP for package management, and I don't believe the native installers include conda. – RNGHatesMe Nov 17 '21 at 19:57
  • The hardest things I run into is installation bugs, like when spyder stopped working when Mac OS 11 came out, or how Anaconda *still* doesn't correctly install on Windows systems that have spaces in the installation path names. As an experienced programmer / sys admin, I can recognize and work around these issues. But students in an introductory programming class often don't even know what a "directory" is anymore, since they've grown up on cell phones and iPads! – RNGHatesMe Nov 17 '21 at 20:00
  • Yeah, that's perhaps the weakest point of our installers, i.e. that they don't package/env management. We'll try to improve that in the coming years. – Carlos Cordoba Nov 17 '21 at 21:54
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(Sorry to be answering my own question, figured it's better for visibility)

So funny thing, as of 11/17/2021, I note that Anaconda's latest release now includes Spyder 5.1.5, so upgrade issues are no longer an problem if installing Anaconda fresh.

spyder 4.2.5 -> 5.1.5 spyder-kernels 1.10.2 -> 2.1.3

(https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/reference/release-notes/)

Yay for fortuitous upgrade releases!

RNGHatesMe
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