Plugin says server fails to start when installed in venv on Windows

[ANP-Oxy]

Description of your problem

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. create a python virtual environment
2. install spyder with pip (latest version)
3. install jupyter notebook with pip and install spyder-notebook extesion

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
expected to be able to open jupyter notebooks inside spyder but it's not working

Please provide any additional information below (stack trace, screenshots, a gif, etc)

Versions and main components

• Spyder Version: 5.4.2
• Python Version: 3.11
• Qt Version:
• PyQt Version:
• Jupyter Notebook Version:
• Operating system: windows 10

Dependencies

Mandatory:

atomicwrites >=1.2.0 : 1.4.1 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0 : 5.1.0 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0 : 2.2.1 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0 : 2.1.1 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111 : 20200713 (OK)
intervaltree >=3.0.2 : 3.1.0 (OK)
IPython >=7.31.1;<9.0.0 : 8.11.0 (OK)
jedi >=0.17.2;<0.19.0 : 0.18.2 (OK)
jellyfish >=0.7 : 0.9.0 (OK)
jsonschema >=3.2.0 : 4.17.3 (OK)
keyring >=17.0.0 : 23.13.1 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0 : 7.2.10 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0 : 1.5.0 (OK)
paramiko >=2.4.0 : 3.1.0 (OK)
parso >=0.7.0;<0.9.0 : 0.8.3 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0 : 4.8.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4 : 0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3 : 5.9.4 (OK)
pygments >=2.0 : 2.14.0 (OK)
pylint >=2.5.0;<3.0 : 2.17.0 (OK)
pylint_venv >=2.1.1 : 3.0.1 (OK)
pyls_spyder >=0.4.0 : 0.4.0 (OK)
pylsp >=1.7.1;<1.8.0 : 1.7.1 (OK)
pylsp_black >=1.2.0 : 1.2.1 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=3.0.2;<3.1.0 : 3.0.3 (OK)
qstylizer >=0.2.2 : 0.2.2 (OK)
qtawesome >=1.2.1 : 1.2.3 (OK)
qtconsole >=5.4.0;<5.5.0 : 5.4.1 (OK)
qtpy >=2.1.0 : 2.3.0 (OK)
rtree >=0.9.7 : 1.0.1 (OK)
setuptools >=49.6.0 : 65.5.0 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6 : 6.1.3 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=2.4.2;<2.5.0 : 2.4.2 (OK)
textdistance >=4.2.0 : 4.5.0 (OK)
three_merge >=0.1.1 : 0.1.1 (OK)
watchdog >=0.10.3 : 3.0.0 (OK)
zmq >=22.1.0 : 25.0.2 (OK)

Optional:

cython >=0.21 : None (NOK)
matplotlib >=3.0.0 : None (NOK)
numpy >=1.7 : None (NOK)
pandas >=1.1.1 : None (NOK)
scipy >=0.17.0 : None (NOK)
sympy >=0.7.3 : None (NOK)

Spyder plugins:

spyder_notebook.notebookplugin 0.4.0 : 0.4.0 (OK)

Please go to the menu entry Help > Optional Dependencies (or
Help > Dependencies), press the button Copy to clipboard
and paste the contents below:

[ccordoba12]

Hey @ANP-Oxy, thanks for reporting. We really don't know what's happening in your case.

@jitseniesen, how is to possible to get the server logs in this case?

[jitseniesen]

It looks like there are no more server logs. I'll try to reproduce the issue.

[jitseniesen]

I treid on Windows 11 and I get the same server error message as ANP-Oxy and the notebook does not appear However, for me the "server info" does show some more messages, so I'm not totally sure it's the same error.

The error only appears when starting from a Python venv. If installing with pip in a conda virtual environment, the plugin works. Maybe the compiled JavaScript is installed in a different directory from what Spyder expects.

@ANP-Oxy Can you please answer the following:

1. In your first step, "create a python virtual environment", do you mean with python venv?
2. Here is something to try. After activating the virtual environment in which you installed spyder, Jupyter notebook and spyder-notebook, give the following command:

   python C:\Users\Anurag\spyder\Lib\site-packages\spyder_notebook\server\main.py path\to\notebook.ipynb
   

   Replace the last argument with the name of a notebook file. This should open a browser window with a notebook. Can you please tell me what happens?

[ANP-Oxy]

@jitseniesen

1. Yes I created the virtual environment with python venv
2. In the Second step do you mean replace the "path\to\notebook.ipynb" with path of a existing jupyter notebook in my filesystem right?

I did that and it opened a a jupyter server on my browser.

But doesn't quiet look right

[jitseniesen]

@ANP-Oxy Thank you. That's exactly the same as I am seeing, so it looks like I managed to reproduce the same issue as you are having.

I also have a hypothesis about the cause of the issue. Spyder starts another Python process using sys.executable which runs the Jupyter notebook server and then it uses the PID of that process to find the server info file. However, according to python/cpython#83086, on Windows in a venv sys.executable points to a redirector which starts the Python interpreter. This means that the PID of the process started with sys.executable is not the same as the PID of the Python process, and as a consequence Spyder does not find the Jupyter notebook server.

[ccordoba12]

Fixed by #408.