[Solved] Almost broke my system tryint to install Spyder3

[dclement]

1st of all, my apology to the forum for posting a message in panic yesterday, which I deleted after recovering, but perhaps not soon enough.

I was trying to get Spyder3, the Spyder development environment with Python 3, on my main PC. It's not in the Mint-Debian repo, but it's in Jessie. So I proceeded to cherry-pick it, adding temporarily the Jessie repo. just for the install. I've done this on occasions with other programs without trouble. Yet here I was cautious, as it involved updating libc6.

However, I had even tried that on a secondary PC with the very same Spyder3 program and it had worked, so I was fairly confident.

But during an attempt to reproduce that on my production PC, something badly screw up in Synaptic. I saw errors about unmet dependencies and packages left unconfigured. Eventually an apt-get install -f fixed that -- but still no Spyder3

Now, both PC have very similar config.: XFCE, from the 2012 ISO on my main PC, while the other one was set up with the 2013 ISO, XFCE being added afterwards.

Do you think this explained why it worked on the latter PC and not on the older one? Or did I by chance run into a network problem on my 2nd attempt?

I'm in no hurry to break my production system to I'll take your advice. Perhaps I could just wait till November and then Spyder3 will enter the regular repo.?

TIA for any advice - best regards, Daniel

[Monsta]

But during an attempt to reproduce that on my production PC, something badly screw up in Synaptic. I saw errors about unmet dependencies and packages left unconfigured.

Synaptic sometimes gives "false positives" about that. Try apt-get or aptitude instead.

[dclement]

But during an attempt to reproduce that on my production PC, something badly screw up in Synaptic. I saw errors about unmet dependencies and packages left unconfigured.

Synaptic sometimes gives "false positives" about that. Try apt-get or aptitude instead.

It had to be something like that, because apt-get worked like a charm.

Having Spyder3 on my main PC is rather important to me, as it's this very version that my students are using. Marking as solved.

Thanks, Monsta!

[TomRoche]

I was trying to get Spyder3, the Spyder development environment with Python 3, on my main PC. It's not in the Mint-Debian repo, but it's in Jessie.

Consider in future using a *python* package {manager, repo}, such as Anaconda, to manage your *python packages*. `conda` especially is very good at using python virtual environments, preventing damage to your system packages. Anaconda is especially recommended for your usecase because, unlike Canopy, it currently supports python-3 (as well as python-2).

[dclement]

I appreciate your advice, TomRoche, but I should have mentioned I was also trying to reproduce the same environment as in my high school, where my students are using precisely Spyder3.

The PCs there are pretty outdated, running Windows XP with little RAM, they struggle just to launch Spyder. I had thought of Anaconda but when I saw the size of the download, I gave up: too heavy for these PCs.

So Spyder (3) is, sort of, a least common denominator between my own PC and those I use at work.