[dborowitz]

Summary

Colab and Colab Enterprise runtimes pre-install ipython==7.34.0 (the final 7.x release) to satisfy google-colab's custom kernel integration constraints. Requiring ipython>=8.0 in extras_require["interactive"] forced pip to upgrade IPython when installing google-cloud-spark-connect[interactive] on Colab Enterprise runtimes, conflicting with google-colab's pinned dependencies and risking kernel incompatibility across restarts.

Nothing in google.cloud.managed_spark_connect or google.cloud.managed_spark_magics depends on IPython 8+ features:

• Interactive shell integration (_ipython.py, session.py, environment.py) and the %%sparksql / %load_spark_connect_session magics only use long-stable APIs already present in IPython 7.34.0 (get_ipython, IPython.display, Magics decorators, extension_manager, magics_manager, post_run_cell events, _showtraceback, and traitlets.config.Configurable).
• All sibling [interactive] dependencies (anywidget, colabsqlviz, ipywidgets, jupyter_DynamicPip, sqlparse) already support ipython==7.34.0.

This PR lowers the floor in setup.py to ipython>=7.34.0 so installing the [interactive] extra on Colab Enterprise preserves the runtime's existing ipython==7.34.0 installation.

Verification

Recorded interactive notebook demo: 23-cell notebook executed end-to-end against a Managed Spark Serverless session in a venv starting with ipython==7.34.0:

1. Live pip install preserves ipython==7.34.0

2. %%sparksql interactive colabsqlviz widget rendering

3. DataFrame rich HTML table rendering (_repr_html_)

4. %dpip runtime package installation and Spark UDF execution

5. Concise PySpark error formatting in %%sparksql

6. %config GoogleSparkConnectShell runtime toggles

[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request updates the setup.py file to lower the minimum required version of ipython from 8.0 to 7.34.0. There are no review comments, and I have no feedback to provide.