Installation — Spyder 3 documentation

# Installation

Spyder is quite easy to install on Windows, Linux and MacOS X. Just the read the following instructions with care.

## Installing on Windows Vista/7/8/10

### The easy way

Spyder is already included in these Python Scientific Distributions:

1. Anaconda
2. WinPython
3. Python(x,y)

You can start using it immediately after installing one of them (you only need to install one!).

### The hard way

If you want to install Spyder directly, you need to follow these steps:

1. Install the essential requirements:

   - The Python programming language
   - PyQt5 (recommended) or PyQt4

2. Install Spyder and its dependencies by running this command:

       pip install spyder

### Updating Spyder

You can update Spyder by:

- Updating Anaconda, WinPython or Python(x,y).

- Or using this command (in case you don’t use any of those scientific distributions):

      pip install --upgrade spyder

  Note

  This command will also update all Spyder dependencies

## Installing on MacOS X

### The easy way

Thanks to the Spyder team and Continuum, you have two alternatives:

1. Use the Anaconda Python distribution.
2. Use our DMG installers, which can be found here.

> Note

> The minimal version to run our DMG’s is Mavericks (10.9) since Spyder 2.3.5. Previous versions work on Lion (10.7) or higher.

### The hard way

Thanks to the MacPorts project, Spyder can be installed using its `port` package manager. There are several versions available from which you can choose from.

> Warning

> It is known that the MacPorts version of Spyder is raising this error: `ValueError: unknown locale: UTF-8`, which doesn’t let it start correctly.

> To fix it you will have to set these environment variables in your `~/.profile` (or `~/.bashrc`) manually:

>     export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>     export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

## Installing on Linux

Please refer to the Requirements section to see what other packages you might need.

1. Ubuntu:

   - Using the official package manager: `sudo apt-get install spyder`.

     Note

     This package could be slightly outdated. If you find that is the case, please use the Debian package mentioned below.

   - Using the pip package manager:

     - Installing: `sudo pip install spyder`
     - Updating: `sudo pip install -U spyder`

2. Debian Unstable:

   Using the package manager: `sudo apt-get install spyder`

   The Spyder’s official Debian package is available here

3. Other Distributions

   Spyder is also available in other GNU/Linux distributions, like

   - Archlinux
   - Fedora
   - Gentoo
   - openSUSE
   - Mageia

   Please refer to your distribution’s documentation to learn how to install it there.

## Installing or running directly from source

### Requirements

The requirements to run Spyder are:

- Python 2.7 or >=3.3
- PyQt5 >=5.2 or PyQt4 >=4.6.0 (PyQt5 is recommended).
- Qtconsole >=4.2.0 – for an enhanced Python interpreter.
- Rope >=0.9.4 and Jedi <http://jedi.jedidjah.ch/en/latest/> 0.9.0 – for code completion, go-to-definition and calltips on the Editor.
- Pyflakes – for real-time code analysis.
- Sphinx – for the Help pane rich text mode and to get our documentation.
- Pygments >=2.0 – for syntax highlighting and code completion in the Editor of all file types it supports.
- Pylint – for static code analysis.
- Pep8 – for style analysis.
- Psutil – for memory/CPU usage in the status bar.
- Nbconvert – to manipulate Jupyter notebooks on the Editor.
- Qtawesome >=0.4.1 – for an icon theme based on FontAwesome.
- Pickleshare – To show import completions on the Editor and Consoles.
- PyZMQ – To run introspection services on the Editor asynchronously.
- QtPy >=1.1.0 – To run Spyder with PyQt4 or PyQt5 seamlessly.
- Chardet >=2.0.0– Character encoding auto-detection in Python.
- Numpydoc Used by Jedi to get return types for functions with Numpydoc docstrings.

### Optional modules

- Matplotlib >=1.0 – for 2D and 3D plotting in the consoles.
- Pandas >=0.13.1 – for view and editing DataFrames and Series in the Variable Explorer.
- Numpy – for view and editing two or three dimensional arrays in the Variable Explorer.
- Sympy >=0.7.3 – for working with symbolic mathematics in the IPython console.
- Scipy – for importing Matlab workspace files in the Variable Explorer.

### Installation procedure

1. If you use Anaconda, you need to run this command to install Spyder:

   `conda install spyder`

2. If you don’t use Anaconda, you need to run:

   `pip install --upgrade spyder`

### Run without installing

You can execute Spyder without installing it first by following these steps:

1. Unzip the source package
2. Change current directory to the unzipped directory
3. Run Spyder with the command `python bootstrap.py`
4. (Optional) Build the documentation with `python setup.py build_doc`.

This is especially useful for beta-testing, troubleshooting and development of Spyder itself.

## Installing the development version

If you want to try the next Spyder version, you have to:

1. Install Spyder requirements

2. Install Git, a powerful source control management tool.

3. Clone the Spyder source code repository with the command:

   `git clone https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder.git`

4. To keep your repository up-to-date, run

   `git pull`

   inside the cloned directory.

5. (Optional) If you want to read the documentation, you must build it first with the command

   `python setup.py build_doc`

## Help and support

Spyder websites:

- For bug reports and feature requests you can go to our website.
- For discussions and help requests, you can suscribe to our Google Group.