Mu-editor and pygame

Trying to install mu-editor 1.1.1 with
sudo pip3 install mu-editor

It is complaining that this needs
pygame < 2.0 and >= 1.9.2
and can’t find a matching version.

How can I

  • either force mu-editor to use pygame 2.1 (which is available in the repos), so bypassing the maxversion limit
  • or install a pygame between 1.9.2 and 1.9.9 for my python3 in Manjaro
    please?

There is mu-editor version 1.1.0 available through AUR?
Unless you need specific 1.1.1

Yes. It’s very old and the linked website of that AUR package says its maintainer abondoned it. So it never will be updated.

See the pinned comment.
The AUR package is orphaned.
https // aur dot archlinux dot org/packages/mu-editor

Common guidance is to avoid using pip to install Python packages at the system level. If a needed package is not available from the Manjaro repositories or via the AUR, you have a couple of options :

  • Direct pip to install the package at the user level (instead of the system level) by using the --user flag. Packages will be installed in your user directory.

  • Set up a virtual environment and use pip to install the packages there. This environment will be independent from your system, so you could install pygame version 1.9.9 in that environment, even as your system pygame remains at 2.1.

1 Like

The second option sounds great. So how exactly do I prepare a

  • Python virtual environment
  • Use Python 3.8 there (on system level I have 3.10.4, which turned out to be incompatible with mu-editor too)
  • Install pygame 1.9.9 from pip there
  • Install mu-editor from pip there
    Can you explain how to do that, please?

Similar to another forum thread, you are asking more of a programming question than a Manjaro support question. There are other Python-specific forums and resources where you can get a better answer to your question. In addition, I lack the expertise to reliably guide you in this matter. Having said that …

If you intend to learn Python development, you will eventually need to be familiar with these things, so it may be worth the effort to read through the documentation.

On the other hand, if what you are after is just a gentle introduction to Python through pygame, you may be better off just finding a more compatible editor to work with.

Thanks for your help. I’m not a total noob at Python and I specifically need mu-editor for using Circuitpython to program the pico nano.
No problem on Ubuntu, but Manjaro sucked at installing the IDE. Finally made it:
mu-editor finally works on my manjaro, despite my system wide Python still is 3.10.4. A Python virtual environment with (directory-local) Python version 3.8.13 and within there using pip install mu-editor did the trick. On Manjaro, it at first was unable to create a virtual envirenment that actually uses a lower Python version. Impossible with virtualenvwrapper or pyenv or pyenv-virtualenv or pipenv or pipx. Manjaros support on these packages simply is either buggy or outdated or both. But it worked fine with “asdf-vm”.