在新的 Anaconda 安装中尝试将 Spyder 更新到版本 5.1.5 时出现许多问题

Question

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?

Answer 1

( 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 (ie 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 followour 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.

Answer 2

(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!