How to start spyder after macports installation

Question

this is my first question to post.

I am working with python at the moment (on mac os 10.6.8), and have struggled for the lack of an ide. I have been using a version of emacs that offers syntax highlighting, but does not offer the ability to browse variable values without print statements. What I was looking for was the equivalent of eclipse, which basically died on my machine when I upgraded from 10.4.11 to 10.6.8. I've not been successful resurrecting it. Time to move on.

My graduate advisor suggested spyder, and last night I bit the bullet, installing macports and (apparently) spyder, successfully.

The problem I'm having is HOW do I start spyder once installed. Apparently, python spyder.py is not the approach to use. Elsewhere (not here) I saw a post that suggested that there was supposed to be a batch executable that I should be able to find by typing

which spyder

This yielded nothing.

The spyder documentation (located at http://packages.python.org/spyder/options.html) suggests that the command

python spyder.py

is the way to go. Here is the result:

Bobs-Machine:spyderlib robertlilly$ python spyder.py

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "spyder.py", line 31, in

from spyderlib import qt #analysis:ignore

ImportError: No module named spyderlib

Most of my searches here have just pointed out that one should use MacPorts for the install, nothing after that. The readme included the macports spyder install, I thought, didn't provide sufficient direction.

If anybody knows where to look, that would be great.

Regards,

Robert

Answer 1

For me, I installed the macports package py37-spyder. In /opt/local/bin there is the package there, spyder-3.7. Launching that works already. In order to make that the default, I have to run

sudo port select --set spyder spyder-37

Then I can run it directly as spyder from Terminal. If you want to see which versions of spyder are available on your system, then

port select --list spyder

will tell you the versions you have.

Answer 2

I just recently installed spyder via MacPorts. (the command I chose was sudo port install py27-spyder, which installed Spyder v.2.2.3 on Mac OS 10.7.5 & Python 2.7.5)

At the end of the Spyder installation, the terminal showed "use command spyder to launch" (or something to that effect)

So, for me, I simply had to type spyder into a terminal to launch it. Your error referring to missing spyderlib might mean that your spyder installation did not in fact complete properly. (I have found it's not uncommon to have to track down 2-3 weird bugs and dependencies for complex MacPorts installs). If you find it did complete properly, then perhaps the MacPorts directory was not added to your PATH. It you open ~/.profile, you should seen that MacPorts added it's directory to the shell's search path. Here's what the MacPorts installer added to my .profile:

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2012-11-19_at_17:16:31: adding an appropriate PATH variable fo$
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.

To make a Mac OS-friendly icon to launch Spyder, I then made a new text file (I did it with Terminal.app>pico) containing the following text:

#!/bin/bash
spyder

and saved the file as spyder.command. This file is now double-clickable and will launch Spyder (and an alias to it can have a more normal name like "Launch Spyder"). Throw it into the /Applications folder & make an Icon for it via /Utilities/Icon Composer.app (grab the Spyder icon on the website) and it's like a Pythonic Matlab!

Answer 3

Macports should install a spyder binary to /opt/local/bin/spyder, or thereabouts. If you already have /opt/local/bin/ in your PATH variable, then just run:

$ spyder &

Or more explicitly:

$ /opt/local/bin/spyder &

...if you don't have the PATH setup. Hope that helps.