[FIXED] How can I successfully create an environment on Spyder (setting Python3.10 as Python interpreter)

Issue

I downloaded a standalone installation of Spyder. I've set Python 3.10 as the Python interpreter for my Spyder IDE.

I then restart Spyder and get the following message:

The Python environment or installation whose interpreter is located at
    H:\Python310\python.exe
doesn't have the spyder‑kernels module or the right version of it installed (>= 2.3.0 and < 2.4.0). Without this module is not possible for Spyder to create a console for you.

You can install it by activating your environment (if necessary) and then running in a system terminal:
    conda install spyder‑kernels=2.3
or
    pip install spyder‑kernels==2.3.*

I've never done this before but nevertheless I tried. I opened command prompt and typed the following and received the following:

H:\>Python310\activate.bat
'Python310\activate.bat' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

H:\>H:\Python310\activate.bat
'H:\Python310\activate.bat' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

I was trying to mimic what this person did:

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

Solution

Python has a concept called virtual environments, wherein you can sandbox your packages to keep them isolated from the global packages and from those in other virtual environments. The user in the picture is using a virtual environment, which gives you the activate.bat file to switch into the virtual environment.

Virtual environments are definitely a preferred way of doing things, but since you're using a standalone setup, it's probably okay to load the package into the global packages and avoid the virtual environments altogether, especially since you may be using Spyder with different projects. To do this, just type python -m pip install spyder-kernels>=2.3 (which is pip's way of saying that you want a version greater than or equal to 2.3). If running python doesn't work on the command line, you will need to add your python directory to your path. You can also add the Scripts subdirectory to the path if you want to run pip install spyder-kernels>=2.3 directly.

Answered By - jonsca