Connecting to kernel fails because of update to Matplotlib 1.5

[xaverm]

Since two days, my spyder ide does not connect to a kernel anymore?
When I start spyder, the IPython console shows "Connecting to kernel ...." and gets stuck on that

when I look into the console, it says:

'import sitecustomize' failed; use -v for traceback
NOTE: When using the ipython kernel entry point, Ctrl-C will not work.

To exit, you will have to explicitly quit this process, by either sending
"quit" from a client, or using Ctrl-\ in UNIX-like environments.

To read more about this, see ipython/ipython#2049

[xaverm]

Please let me add some more info to this issue. Any help would be most appreciated! Thank you.

1. the system this occurs on is linux openSUSE 13.1 (x86_64), version = 13.1, codename = Bottle, kernel 3.11.10-29-desktop

2. running ipython in a terminal I have: Python 2.7.6, IPython 3.2.1

3. Spyder's version is Spyder 2.3.7. This version is from Tue 06 Oct 2015, and has been installed on Oct. 11. Since then Spyder has been used heavily without issues until ~2 days ago.

4. the issue is not user-specific. Setting up a fresh default user with non-existent ~/.ipython and non-existent ~/.spyder and invoking spyder for its first time for this user will produce the same issue

5. 'other' ipython dev-tools, like ipython's-browser notebook work without problems

6. I don't know if this is of any help, but I have attached a figure showing the update history of the system for the last ~10 days, only related to potential python stuff, i.e. the output of tail -200 /var/log/zypp/history | grep insta | grep py
   

[0xzz]

There seems to be compatibility issues with the recent updated matplotlib-1.5.0 and spyder. I had similar problems after upgrading matplotlib. Downgrading matplotlib to 1.4.3 fixed the problem for me. I am on Manjaro Linux.

[xaverm]

Yes, your suggestion works for me for now. Thank you!
This is certainly not an optimal state of affairs. Hopefully there will be a true fix soon? Matplotlib is among the most rapidly moving targets on the scene. So a remaining compatibility issue with Spyder would be awkward.

[ELE3E]

Worked for me too. I've been trying solutions for days now. Finally!

[davidovitch]

This doesn't seem to affect the python3 version of Matplotlib/Spyder (on my Arch Linux installation at least).

[dallasmasters]

Bump. Confirmed for me too.

[ELE3E]

Shouldn't this be posted as a matplotlib issue instead?

[TimothyVD]

I had the same problem (OpenSuse 13.1/python2.7/matplotlib1.5-dev/latest spyder version). I could fix the automatic connection to the kernel if I removed the cycler module. However, this module is required by matplotlib1.5-dev. I "fixed" this issue by manually connecting to an external kernel, but in that way no plots are shown (I only had to save figures).

[ccordoba12]

Thanks for the report and for finding the solution. I'll investigate what's happening and try to solve the problem as soon as possible.

[hmendozap]

Confirmed on Ubuntu 14.04, ipython 4.0.0 and Spyder 2.3.7. I had to revert to matplotlib 1.4.3

[ccordoba12]

I can reproduce the error and will fix it in version 2.3.8 (to be released in a couple of days).

I had to wait until Continuum released packages for Matplotlib 1.5 to test this. Thanks for your patience :-)