Why is Conda not installing/updating the latest version of Spyder?

Question

I want to install Spyder on my Anaconda, so I ran the code exactly as instructed here: https://anaconda.org/anaconda/spyder

conda install -c anaconda spyder

Running Spyder gave me both:

1. A prompt that says that there is a new version of Spyder
2. An internal error about "Spyder has encountered an internal problem!"

Okay, so I'll try to update Spyder first, and follow the command line instructions here: https://docs.spyder-ide.org/current/installation.html

conda update anaconda
conda update spyder

Opening Spyder still gave me the same prompt and error. I then checked my Spyder version to be 4.0.1.

Updating everything doesn't seem to help either:

conda update --all

My Spyder is still version 4.0.1.

Digging further on the error code, supposed "solutions" were given here:
https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/issues/12243
https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/issues/13370
https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/issues/11798

Which is simply to tell users to install the latest version of Spyder by

conda install spyder=4.1.*

But those bug reports and "solutions" were made one year ago. Spyder is on later versions now.

Why is conda still installing Spyder version 4.0.1, with all the issues, one year after 4.0.1 is known to be problematic? Why does it not update correctly to any later version? The latest version is supposed to be 5.0.0, with even 4.2.* rolled out before that.

Answer 1

The problem is with the Anaconda channel.

I uninstalled Spyder and then install with the line:

conda install spyder

and Spyder 5.0.0 was successfully installed.

Anaconda's Spyder page ( https://anaconda.org/anaconda/spyder ) gave the command as:

conda install -c anaconda spyder

which led to the installation of Spyder 4.0.1, instead of 5.0.0 which was what it was supposed to install as documented on the page itself.