Getting Notebooks to recognize conda env ( ImportError: cannot import name 'ensure_dir_exists' )

[brookisme]

Hi Jupyter-Folk.

Previously when I launched a jupyter-notebook within a conda environment I would have access to the conda environment. I recently started with a clean Anaconda3 (macOS) install and now I can no longer connect to the conda env with jupyter. The issue seems to be related to this issue and this stack-overflow question.

I would expect after creating and activating a conda env, that either jupyter notebook:

• would work out of the box and recognize the environment it was launched in: this does not happen. the jupyter-notebook doesn't have access to the modules installed in the new env
• or, i would need to run conda install jupyter in the new environment. the install fails with ImportError: cannot import name 'ensure_dir_exists'. Note the traceback does indeed indicate that it is using the correct conda-env /Users/brook/anaconda3/envs/test2/lib/python3.6/site-packages/notebook/nbextensions.py

I tried the following:

• conda update jupyter_core jupyter_client in the base env: this did not fix any of the problems
• conda install jupyter_core jupyter_client notebook in the new env: these installed correctly but then when i ran jupyter notebook i got ImportError: cannot import name 'ensure_dir_exists'
• conda install nb_conda in the new env but that also failed with ImportError: cannot import name 'ensure_dir_exists'
• conda install nb_conda in the base env: this almost worked - i think. after launching the notebook the conda tab shows my current env as the default.

However when creating a notebook i do not see it listed as an option

I thought that since its checked as the default the "Python 3" option would be the current env "test3". However this still didn't work - importing modules give ModuleNotFoundError and double checking at the command line the modules are correctly installed.

Finally. I should note that recently I did a Unix install on a cloud instance and running conda install jupyter in the new env worked as expected.

For those who made it this far, some details:

• macOS (10.11.6)
• i tried the graphical-installer, also the cmd line install from the most recent version as well as 5.3.1 and 5.2.0
• and ...

Thanks!