Have Spyder offer to install spyder-kernels in virtual environments

What steps will reproduce the problem?

When a user does not have the appropriate version of spyder-kernels installed, the IPython console fails to start with the following message:

Your Python environment or installation doesn't have the spyder‑kernels module or the right version of it installed (>= 2.1.0 and < 2.2.0). Without this module is not possible for Spyder to create a console for you.

You can install it by running in a system terminal:

conda install spyder‑kernels=2.1

or

pip install spyder‑kernels==2.1.*

It would be convenient if Spyder provided a dialog window offering to install the appropriate version of spyder-kernels (and possibly pyqt) for the user.

[CAM-Gerlach]

FWIW, @ccordoba12 basically said everything I wanted to say, but more clearly and eloquently and in half the words, heh.

@mrclary Thanks for understanding, and even better for offering to pitch in on the package management support—I’m sure that would be a huge help in finally implementing a feature we’ve always wanted to add but hadn’t yet been able to fully scrape together all the dev time for given the other priorities that kept coming up.

Sidenote @ccordoba12 —why did @spyder-bot re-open the issue?

[mrclary]

@ccordoba12 @CAM-Gerlach, thank you both for your patience and willingness to discuss this issue. I now agree that providing this small functionality will open a pandora’s box before we’re ready to provide the superior solution. I do think that Spyder’s own environment and package manager will be a welcome and worthwhile feature and I look forward to contributing to its development.