Today when I use :checkhealth to check if there are anything wrong with my Neovim and related packages. I got an info that Python neovim package is not up to date. So I tried to update neovim with pip install --upgrade neovim. This is the start of a disaster which wastes me several hours.

After the upgrade, when I open Neovim, it complains:

UltiSnips requires py >= 2.7 or py3

I add the following setting in my init.vim:

let g:python3_host_prog='/home/jdhao/tools/anaconda3/bin/python'

The above warning message disappears. Each time I open nvim, I see the error message:

[deoplete] deoplete failed to load. Try the :UpdateRemotePlugins command and restart Neovim. See also :checkhealth.

I follow the guide and use :UpdateRemotePlugins command. Then I got another error message:

function remote#host#UpdateRemotePlugins[6]..<SNR>36_RegistrationCommands[15]..remote#host#Require[10]..provider#pythonx#Require[13]..provider#Poll, line 4
Vim(if):ch 3 was closed by the client
function remote#host#UpdateRemotePlugins[6]..<SNR>36_RegistrationCommands[15]..remote#host#Require[10]..provider#pythonx#Require[13]..provider#Poll, line 14
Failed to load python3 host. You can try to see what happened by starting nvim with $NVIM_PYTHON_LOG_FILE set and opening the generated log file. Also, the host stderr is available in messages.
remote/host: generated rplugin manifest: /home/jdhao/.local/share/nvim/rplugin.vim

I may also get the error message:

function remote#host#UpdateRemotePlugins[6]..<SNR>36_RegistrationCommands[15]..remote#host#Require[10]..provider#pythonx#Require[13]..provider#Poll, line 4
Vim(if):ch 3 was closed by the client
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'neovim'
function remote#host#UpdateRemotePlugins[6]..<SNR>36_RegistrationCommands[15]..remote#host#Require[10]..provider#pythonx#Require[13]..provider#Poll, line 14
Failed to load python3 host. You can try to see what happened by starting nvim with $NVIM_PYTHON_LOG_FILE set and opening the generated log file. Also, the host stderr is available in messages.
remote/host: generated rplugin manifest: /home/jdhao/.local/share/nvim/rplugin.vim

In fact, neovim is already installed and conda list|grep neovim shows:

neovim 0.3.1

I tried to unistall neovim and reinstall:

pip uninstall neovim
pip install neovim
# or pip install --no-cache-dir neovim

and the error was not gone. Installing the neovim package under user directory also does not work:

# does not work
pip install --user neovim

Why is neovim package not found but pip reports that neovim is installed? When I go to $ANACONDA_ROOT/Lib/site-packages, ls neovim* only shows the neovim egg/wheel info directory. There is acutually no package installed. That is the reason why neovim pacakge is not found.

Finally, I decided to do a complete uninstall and reinstall neovim. By complete uninstall, I mean to remove all dependency packages installed along with neovim. These dependency packages are:

After uninstalling these packages and reinstall neovim with pip install --no-cache-dir neovim, the error finally disappeared:

pip uninstall -y neovim pynvim msgpack greenlet
pip install neovim

Now, ls|grep neovim command in Anaconda Python site package directory shows:

205:neovim/ 206:neovim-0.3.1.dist-info/

So the neovim Python client is successfully installed. Now open neovim and use issue UpdateRemotePlugins command, you will see:

remote/host: python3 host registered plugins ['deoplete']
remote/host: generated rplugin manifest: /home/jdhao/.local/share/nvim/rplugin.vim

Restart Neovim and the error message will disappear. You will be able to use autocompletion again.

References#

• https://github.com/Shougo/deoplete.nvim/issues/550
• https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/8085
• https://github.com/neovim/pynvim/issues/380