I have been trying to get the current version of MNE running on MacOS M1. It just won’t run Spyder. I already tried installing the Spyder-kernels and getting Spyder from spyder-ide.org (and using the MNE Python interpreter). It will then launch the IDE, but complain about missing dependencies (QT…), so it still doesn’t work. When I add these dependencies, the whole thing breaks and python doesn’t start anymore.
Will there be a version of MNE that will work again or is MacOS now just unsupported?
I downloaded the MNE installer version 1.8.0 for MacOS Apple Silicon from MNE-Python installers — MNE 1.8.0 documentation
I installed it normally like I did with previous versions. (I am currently running 1.6.1). After this when I click on Spyder it just doesn’t start. I see the icon moving like twice and then nothing. No error message or anything. I tracked it down to the point that I know that the MNE installer does not include the Spyder scripts and support anymore.
There is no /Applications/MNE-Python/1.8.0_0/.mne-python/bin/spyder
The Spyder “app” essentially tries to execute this spyder script and since it’s not there, it just fails without an error message.
I can open the MNE “Prompt” app and it seems to work in general. I tried a “conda install spyder -kernels” and it installs a few things, but Spyder still doesn’t work. I have used the MNE installer for a few previous versions already and it worked just fine so far.
I eventually solved it just now. With a clean install, you need to open the “Prompt”, then conda install spyder-kernels and conda install spyder. I also copied the “.mne-python/bin/spyder” script from 1.6.1 to the 1.8.0 installation and changed the path in the script to 1.8.0.
It just feels a bit unnecessary to include a Spyder App, which doesn’t work until you actually install spyder via conda.
yes, absolutely. I tried that. The “spyder” script was missing in /Applications/MNE-Python/1.8.0_0/.mne-python/bin.
I asked some people here and they told me that they don’t use the MNE installer on MacOS or don’t use Spyder at all. I ended up sticking to the MNE installer, because I experienced a lot of package incompatibilities when going any other route. Most people seem to use Linux.
but why? I also tried downloading spyder from their website and setting it up separately, but let it use the MNE python interpreter just as was described. I tried to install the necessary dependency libraries to run MNE und MNE graphics. This would break the Spyder environment completely.
Do you all use a different IDE? If Spyder is now unsupported, I would be open to switching to something else. As I described, I just experienced a lot of problems with unavailable and incompatible dependencies when combining MNE with other python environments.
VSCode is very common nowadays, I’ve used it for a few years now as have a lot of other devs I know.
For MNE incompatibilities keep in mind conda install mne will install and require a ton of stuff, conda install mne-base will require much less (but you might have to manually install some other dependencies you need). So if you need better compat with another env then conda install mne-base is generally much easier.
I know that my personal opinion isn’t all that important, but I certainly prefer Spyder over a Microsoft product anytime, so I would appreciate if MNE could retain Spyder-support.