Important

This documentation covers IPython versions 6.0 and higher. Beginning with version 6.0, IPython stopped supporting compatibility with Python versions lower than 3.3 including all versions of Python 2.7.

If you are looking for an IPython version compatible with Python 2.7, please use the IPython 5.x LTS release and refer to its documentation (LTS is the long term support release).

6.x Series

IPython 6.5.0

Miscellaneous bug fixes and compatibility with Python 3.7.

  • Autocompletion fix for modules with out __init__.py PR #11227

  • update the %pastebin magic to use dpaste.com instead og GitHub Gist which now requires authentication PR #11182

  • Fix crash with multiprocessing PR #11185

IPython 6.4.0

Everything new in IPython 5.7

IPython 6.3.1

This is a bugfix release to switch the default completions back to IPython’s own completion machinery. We discovered some problems with the completions from Jedi, including completing column names on pandas data frames.

You can switch the completions source with the config option Completer.use_jedi.

IPython 6.3

IPython 6.3 contains all the bug fixes and features in IPython 5.6. In addition:

  • A new display class IPython.display.Code can be used to display syntax highlighted code in a notebook (PR #10978).

  • The %%html magic now takes a --isolated option to put the content in an iframe (PR #10962).

  • The code to find completions using the Jedi library has had various adjustments. This is still a work in progress, but we hope this version has fewer annoyances (PR #10956, PR #10969, PR #10999, PR #11035, PR #11063, PR #11065).

  • The post event callbacks are now always called, even when the execution failed (for example because of a SyntaxError).

  • The execution info and result objects are now made available in the corresponding pre or post *_run_cell event callbacks in a backward compatible manner (#10774 and PR #10795).

  • Performance with very long code cells (hundreds of lines) is greatly improved (PR #10898). Further improvements are planned for IPython 7.

You can see all pull requests for the 6.3 milestone.

IPython 6.2

IPython 6.2 contains all the bugs fixes and features available in IPython 5.5, like built in progress bar support, and system-wide configuration

The following features are specific to IPython 6.2:

Function signature in completions

Terminal IPython will now show the signature of the function while completing. Only the currently highlighted function will show its signature on the line below the completer by default. This functionality is recent, so it might be limited; we welcome bug reports and requests for enhancements. PR #10507

Assignments return values

IPython can now trigger the display hook on the last assignment of cells. Up until 6.2 the following code wouldn’t show the value of the assigned variable:

In[1]: xyz = "something"
# nothing shown

You would have to actually make it the last statement:

In [2]: xyz = "something else"
...   : xyz
Out[2]: "something else"

With the option InteractiveShell.ast_node_interactivity='last_expr_or_assign' you can now do:

In [2]: xyz = "something else"
Out[2]: "something else"

This option can be toggled at runtime with the %config magic, and will trigger on assignment a = 1, augmented assignment +=, -=, |= … as well as type annotated assignments: a:int = 2.

See PR #10598

Recursive Call of ipdb

Advanced users of the debugger can now correctly recursively enter ipdb. This is thanks to @segevfiner on PR #10721.

IPython 6.1

  • Quotes in a filename are always escaped during tab-completion on non-Windows. PR #10069

  • Variables now shadow magics in autocompletion. See #4877 and PR #10542.

  • Added the ability to add parameters to alias_magic. For example:

    In [2]: %alias_magic hist history --params "-l 2" --line
Created `%hist` as an alias for `%history -l 2`.

In [3]: hist
%alias_magic hist history --params "-l 30" --line
%alias_magic hist history --params "-l 2" --line

    Previously it was only possible to have an alias attached to a single function, and you would have to pass in the given parameters every time:

    In [4]: %alias_magic hist history --line
Created `%hist` as an alias for `%history`.

In [5]: hist -l 2
hist
%alias_magic hist history --line

  • To suppress log state messages, you can now either use %logstart -q, pass --LoggingMagics.quiet=True on the command line, or set c.LoggingMagics.quiet=True in your configuration file.

  • An additional flag --TerminalInteractiveShell.term_title_format is introduced to allow the user to control the format of the terminal title. It is specified as a python format string, and currently the only variable it will format is {cwd}.

  • ??/%pinfo2 will now show object docstrings if the source can’t be retrieved. PR #10532

  • IPython.display has gained a %markdown cell magic. PR #10563

  • %config options can now be tab completed. PR #10555

  • %config with no arguments are now unique and sorted. PR #10548

  • Completion on keyword arguments does not duplicate = sign if already present. PR #10547

  • %run -m <module> now <module> passes extra arguments to <module>. PR #10546

  • completer now understand “snake case auto complete”: if foo_bar_kittens is a valid completion, I can type f_b<tab> will complete to it. PR #10537

  • tracebacks are better standardized and will compress /path/to/home to ~. PR #10515

The following changes were also added to IPython 5.4, see what’s new in IPython 5.4 for more detail description:

  • TerminalInteractiveShell is configurable and can be configured to (re)-use the readline interface.

  • objects can now define a _repr_mimebundle_

  • Execution heuristics improve for single line statements

  • display() can now return a display id to update display areas.

IPython 6.0

Released April 19th, 2017

IPython 6 features a major improvement in the completion machinery which is now capable of completing non-executed code. It is also the first version of IPython to stop compatibility with Python 2, which is still supported on the bugfix only 5.x branch. Read below for a non-exhaustive list of new features.

Make sure you have pip > 9.0 before upgrading. You should be able to update by using:

pip install ipython --upgrade

Note

If your pip version is greater than or equal to pip 9.0.1 you will automatically get the most recent version of IPython compatible with your system: on Python 2 you will get the latest IPython 5.x bugfix, while in Python 3 you will get the latest 6.x stable version.

New completion API and Interface

The completer Completion API has seen an overhaul, and the new completer has plenty of improvements both from the end users of terminal IPython and for consumers of the API.

This new API is capable of pulling completions from jedi, thus allowing type inference on non-executed code. If jedi is installed, completions like the following are now possible without code evaluation:

>>> data = ['Number of users', 123_456]
... data[0].<tab>

That is to say, IPython is now capable of inferring that data[0] is a string, and will suggest completions like .capitalize. The completion power of IPython will increase with new Jedi releases, and a number of bug-fixes and more completions are already available on the development version of jedi if you are curious.

With the help of prompt toolkit, types of completions can be shown in the completer interface:

Jedi showing ability to do type inference

The appearance of the completer is controlled by the c.TerminalInteractiveShell.display_completions option that will show the type differently depending on the value among 'column', 'multicolumn' and 'readlinelike'

The use of Jedi also fulfills a number of requests and fixes a number of bugs like case-insensitive completion and completion after division operator: See PR #10182.

Extra patches and updates will be needed to the ipykernel package for this feature to be available to other clients like Jupyter Notebook, Lab, Nteract, Hydrogen…

The use of Jedi should be barely noticeable on recent machines, but can be slower on older ones. To tweak the performance, the amount of time given to Jedi to compute type inference can be adjusted with c.IPCompleter.jedi_compute_type_timeout. The objects whose type were not inferred will be shown as <unknown>. Jedi can also be completely deactivated by using the c.Completer.use_jedi=False option.

The old Completer.complete() API is waiting deprecation and should be replaced replaced by Completer.completions() in the near future. Feedback on the current state of the API and suggestions are welcome.

Python 3 only codebase

One of the large challenges in IPython 6.0 has been the adoption of a pure Python 3 codebase, which has led to upstream patches in pip, pypi and warehouse to make sure Python 2 systems still upgrade to the latest compatible Python version.

We remind our Python 2 users that IPython 5 is still compatible with Python 2.7, still maintained and will get regular releases. Using pip 9+, upgrading IPython will automatically upgrade to the latest version compatible with your system.

Warning

If you are on a system using an older version of pip on Python 2, pip may still install IPython 6.0 on your system, and IPython will refuse to start. You can fix this by upgrading pip, and reinstalling ipython, or forcing pip to install an earlier version: pip install 'ipython<6'

The ability to use only Python 3 on the code base of IPython brings a number of advantages. Most of the newly written code make use of optional function type annotation leading to clearer code and better documentation.

The total size of the repository has also decreased by about 1500 lines (for the first time excluding the big split for 4.0). The decrease is potentially a bit more for the sour as some documents like this one are append only and are about 300 lines long.

The removal of the Python2/Python3 shim layer has made the code quite a lot clearer and more idiomatic in a number of locations, and much friendlier to work with and understand. We hope to further embrace Python 3 capabilities in the next release cycle and introduce more of the Python 3 only idioms (yield from, kwarg only, general unpacking) in the IPython code base, and see if we can take advantage of these to improve user experience with better error messages and hints.

Configurable TerminalInteractiveShell, readline interface

IPython gained a new c.TerminalIPythonApp.interactive_shell_class option that allows customizing the class used to start the terminal frontend. This should allow a user to use custom interfaces, like reviving the former readline interface which is now a separate package not actively maintained by the core team. See the project to bring back the readline interface: rlipython.

This change will be backported to the IPython 5.x series.

Misc improvements

  • The %%capture magic can now capture the result of a cell (from an expression on the last line), as well as printed and displayed output. PR #9851.

  • Pressing Ctrl-Z in the terminal debugger now suspends IPython, as it already does in the main terminal prompt.

  • Autoreload can now reload Enum. See #10232 and PR #10316

  • IPython.display has gained a GeoJSON object. PR #10288 and PR #10253

Functions Deprecated in 6.x Development cycle

  • Loading extensions from ipython_extension_dir prints a warning that this location is pending deprecation. This should only affect users still having extensions installed with %install_ext which has been deprecated since IPython 4.0, and removed in 5.0. Extensions still present in ipython_extension_dir may shadow more recently installed versions using pip. It is thus recommended to clean ipython_extension_dir of any extension now available as a package.

  • IPython.utils.warn was deprecated in IPython 4.0, and has now been removed. instead of IPython.utils.warn inbuilt warnings module is used.

  • The function IPython.core.oinspect.py:call_tip is unused, was marked as deprecated (raising a DeprecationWarning) and marked for later removal. PR #10104

Backward incompatible changes

Functions Removed in 6.x Development cycle

The following functions have been removed in the development cycle marked for Milestone 6.0.

  • IPython/utils/process.py - is_cmd_found

  • IPython/utils/process.py - pycmd2argv

  • The --deep-reload flag and the corresponding options to inject dreload or reload into the interactive namespace have been removed. You have to explicitly import reload from IPython.lib.deepreload to use it.

  • The %profile used to print the current IPython profile, and which was deprecated in IPython 2.0 does now raise a DeprecationWarning error when used. It is often confused with the %prun and the deprecation removal should free up the profile name in future versions.