IPython console can't locate "backports.shutil_get_terminal_size" and won't load

Question

I'm running Python2.7 on windows 10 doing env and most pkg management with Anaconda. After upgrading a number of packages, my ipython console now fails to start in any IDE or at the console. When I attempt to run it at the console I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Anaconda3\Scripts\ipython-script.py", line 3, in <module>
import IPython
File "C:\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\IPython\__init__.py", line 48, in  <module>
from .core.application import Application
File "C:\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\IPython\core\application.py", line 24, in <module>
from IPython.core import release, crashhandler
File "C:\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\IPython\core\crashhandler.py", line 28, in <module>
from IPython.core import ultratb
File "C:\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\IPython\core\ultratb.py", line 121, in <module>
from IPython.utils.terminal import get_terminal_size
File "C:\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\IPython\utils\terminal.py", line 27, in <module>
import backports.shutil_get_terminal_size
ImportError: No module named backports.shutil_get_terminal_size

The first thing I tried to do was:

pip install --upgrade backports.shutil_get_terminal_size

output:

Requirement already up-to-date: backports.shutil_get_terminal_size in c:\anaconda3\lib\site-packages

I've uninstalled and reinstalled ipython with both

conda uninstall ipython
conda install ipython

and

pip uninstall ipython
pip install ipython

Still won't work. Help please!

Answer 1

Try this

conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda install backports.shutil_get_terminal_size

Answer 2

I am on CentOS 7, and I needed to change my terminal.py as shown below.

On the import statements I messed around with the prefixes and got it to work -

import os
import sys
import warnings
try:
  from backports import get_terminal_size as _get_terminal_size
except ImportError:
  # use backport on Python 2
  from shutil_backports import get_terminal_size as _get_terminal_size

Answer 3

According to this thread this is due to a bug in conda which leads to a conflict with pip installs and can be solved with a force re-install. For the thread author, $ conda install --force ipython solved the issue, for me it was $ conda install --force backports.