[ANN] Spyder 6.1.0b1 is released!

[Daniel Althviz Moré]

Hi all,

On behalf of the Spyder Project Contributors, I'm pleased to announce the first beta of our next minor version: Spyder 6.1.

We've been working on this version for more than half a year now and it's working relatively well. We encourage all people who like the bleeding edge to give it a try.

Spyder 6.1 comes with the following interesting new features and fixes:

• New features

  • Add support to work with multiple cursors in the Editor. Options to configure them are available in Preferences > Editor > Advanced settings.
  • Rearchitect Profiler to run through the IPython console and add %profilefile, %profilecell and %profile magics for that.
  • Add a graphical interface to the update process of our standalone installers and base them in Python 3.12.
  • Add support to use Ruff and Flake8 for linting in the Editor.
  • Plot histograms from the dataframe viewer.
  • Add support for Polars dataframes, frozen sets, Numpy string arrays and pathlib.Path objects to the Variable Explorer.
  • Show the remote file system in the Files pane when a remote console has focus.
  • Add support to connect to JupyterHub servers.
  • Add support to use Pixi environments in the IPython console.
  • Paths can be added to the front of sys.path in the Pythonpath manager.
  • Copy/cut the current line if nothing is selected in the Editor with Ctrl+C/Ctrl+X, respectively.
  • Add option to show/hide the Editor's file name toolbar to Preferences > Editor > Interface.
  • Select full floating point numbers by double-clicking them on the Editor and the IPython console.

• Important fixes

  • Much better support for PyQt6 and PySide6.
  • Make shortcuts to move to different panes work when they are undocked.
  • Remove blank lines around cells when copying their contents to the console.
  • Automatically kill kernels when Spyder crashes.
  • Disable magics and commands to call Python package managers in the IPython console because they don't work reliably there.
  • Add support for IPython 9.
  • Drop support for Python 3.8

• UX/UI improvements

  • Reorganize most menus to make them easier to navigate.
  • Allow to zoom in/out with Ctrl + mouse wheel in the IPython console.
  • Add Shift+Alt+Right/Left shortcuts to move to the next/previous console.
  • Add shortcut Ctrl+W to close Variable Explorer viewers.
  • Add option to hide all messages displayed in panes that are empty to Preferences > Application > Interface.
  • Fix plots looking blurred when scaling is enabled in high DPI screens.

• API changes

  • Editor
    • Breaking - The NewFile, OpenFile, OpenLastClosed, MaxRecentFiles, ClearRecentFiles, SaveFile, SaveAll, SaveAs, SaveCopyAs, RevertFile, CloseFile, CloseAll, Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, SelectAll, FindText, FindNext, FindPrevious and ReplaceText actions were moved to the ApplicationActions class in the Application plugin.
    • Breaking - The shortcuts "new file", "open file", "open last closed", "save file", "save all", "save as", "close file 1", "close file 2" and "close all" were moved to the "main" section.
    • Add "undo", "redo", "cut", "copy", "paste" and "select all" shortcuts to the "main" section.
    • Add open_last_closed, current_file_is_temporary, save_all, save_as, save_copy_as, revert_file, undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, select_all, find, find_next, find_previous and replace methods.
  • IPython console
    • Breaking - The sig_current_directory_changed signal now emits two strings instead of a single one.
    • Breaking - Remove set_working_directory method. You can use set_current_client_working_directory instead, which does the same.
    • Breaking - The save_working_directory method was made private because it's only used internally.
    • Add sender_plugin kwarg to the set_current_client_working_directory method.
    • Add server_id kwarg to the set_current_client_working_directory method.
    • Add Switch entry to IPythonConsoleWidgetMenus.
    • Add NextConsole and PreviousConsole to IPythonConsoleWidgetActions.
    • Add undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, select_all, find, find_next and find_previous methods.
  • Working Directory
    • Breaking - The sig_current_directory_changed signal now emits three strings instead of a single one.
    • Breaking - The sender_plugin kwarg of the chdir method now expects a string instead of a SpyderPluginV2 object.
    • Add server_id kwarg to the chdir method.
  • Remote Client
    • Breaking - The create_ipyclient_for_server and get_kernels methods were removed.
    • Add sig_server_changed signal to report when a server was added or removed.
    • Add sig_create_env_requested and sig_import_env_requested to request creating or importing a remote environment (they work if the Spyder-env-manager plugin is installed).
    • Add get_server_name method to get a server name given its id.
    • Add register_api and get_api methods in order to get and register new rest API modules for the remote client.
    • Add get_jupyter_api method to get the Jupyter API to interact with a remote Jupyter server.
    • Add get_file_api method to get the rest API module to manage remote file systems.
    • Add get_environ_api method to get the rest API module to work with environment variables in the remote machine.
    • Add set_default_kernel_spec in order to set the kernel spec used to open default consoles.
  • Pythonpath manager
    • Breaking - The sig_pythonpath_changed signal now emits a list of strings and a bool, instead of two dictionaries.
  • Application plugin
    • Add create_new_file, open_file_using_dialog, open_file_in_plugin, open_last_closed_file, add_recent_file, save_file, save_file_as, save_copy_as, revert_file, close_file, close_all and enable_file_action methods to perform file operations in the appropriate plugin.
    • Add undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, select_all and enable_edit_action methods to perform edit operations in the appropriate plugin.
    • Add find, find_next, find_previous, replace and enable_search_action methods to perform search operations in the appropriate plugin.
    • Add focused_plugin attribute.
  • File Explorer
    • Breaking - ExplorerTreeWidgetActions renamed to ExplorerWidgetActions.
    • Breaking - The sig_dir_opened signal now emits two strings instead of a single one.
    • Add server_id kwarg to the chdir method.
  • Profiler
    • Breaking - Remove sig_started and sig_finished signals, and run_profiler, stop_profiler and run_file methods.
    • Breaking - Remove ProfilerWidgetToolbars and ProfilerWidgetInformationToolbarSections enums
    • Add ProfilerWidgetMenus, ProfilerContextMenuSections and ProfilerWidgetContextMenuActions enums.
    • Add profile_file, profile_cell and profile_selection methods.
  • Main menu
    • Breaking - From SourceMenuSections, move the Formatting section to EditMenuSections and Cursor to SearchMenuSections, remove the CodeAnalysis section and add the Autofix section.
    • Breaking - Replace the Tools, External and Extras sections in ToolsMenuSections with Managers and Preferences.
    • Future Breaking - Rename the View menu to Window in ApplicationMenus and ViewMenuSections to WindowMenuSections; aliases are retained for backward compatibility but may be removed in Spyder 7+.
    • Add Profile constant to RunMenuSections.
  • Toolbar
    • Add Profile constant to ApplicationToolbars.
  • SpyderPluginV2
    • Add CAN_HANDLE_FILE_ACTIONS and FILE_EXTENSIONS attributes and create_new_file, open_file, get_current_filename, current_file_is_temporary, open_last_closed_file, save_file, save_all, save_file_as, save_copy_as, revert_file, close_file and close all methods to allow other plugins to hook into file actions.
    • Add CAN_HANDLE_EDIT_ACTIONS attribute and undo, redo, cut, copy, paste and select_all methods to allow other plugins to hook into edit actions.
    • Add CAN_HANDLE_SEARCH_ACTIONS attribute and find, find_next, find_previous and replace methods to allow other plugins to hook into search actions.
    • Add sig_focused_plugin_changed signal to signal that the plugin with focus has changed.
  • PluginMainWidget
    • Add SHOW_MESSAGE_WHEN_EMPTY, MESSAGE_WHEN_EMPTY, IMAGE_WHEN_EMPTY, DESCRIPTION_WHEN_EMPTY and SET_LAYOUT_WHEN_EMPTY class attributes, and set_content_widget, show_content_widget and show_empty_message methods to display a message when it's empty (like the one shown in the Variable Explorer).
  • Shellconnect
    • Breaking - Rename is_current_widget_empty to is_current_widget_error_message in ShellConnectMainWidget.
    • Add switch_empty_message to ShellConnectMainWidget to switch between the empty message widget and the one with content.
    • Add ShellConnectWidgetForStackMixin class for widgets that will be added to the stacked widget part of ShellConnectMainWidget.
  • AsyncDispatcher
    • Breaking - Remove dispatch method to use it directly as decorator.
    • Add class DispatcherFuture to spyder.api.asyncdispatcher and QtSlot method to AsyncDispatcher so that connected methods can be run inside the main Qt event loop.
    • Add early_return and return_awaitable kwargs its constructor.
  • General API
    • Breaking - Remove old_conf_version method from SpyderConfigurationAccessor.
    • Add OptionalPlugins enum for plugins that Spyder can rely on to provide additional functionality.

For a more complete list of changes, please see our changelog

You can easily install this release candidate if you use conda by running:

conda install -c conda-forge/label/spyder_rc -c conda-forge/label/spyder_kernels_rc -c conda-forge spyder=6.1.0b1

Or you can use pip with this command:

pip install --pre -U spyder

Enjoy!

Daniel