[yt-dev] Updating get_yt.sh, a question about defaults

[Nathan Goldbaum]

Hi all,

I've just issued a pull request to update the get_yt.sh script.

https://bitbucket.org/yt_analysis/yt/pull-requests/1834/updating-miniconda-install-script/diff

This uses miniconda to install yt into a user-writable prefix. The main
advantage over the install script is that we don't need to bootstrap
python. This is a big help on OS X 10.11, since the openssl headers are no
longer available there.

In the version of the script I just pull requested, I've set it to no
longer build yt from source. Instead it does "conda install yt". I did this
because it significantly simplifies the user-visible setup. In particular,
users no longer need to have compilers installed to install everything, and
we don't need to tell people to install XCode or a bunch of packages. It's
also the case that the Conda versions of libraries are less useful for
local development due to the way conda makes packages relocatable.

My plan with this is to still keep the install script available, but offer
the get_yt.sh script as an alternate install script more suitable for
"quick" installations for users who aren't likely going to hack on yt. The
install script will still be available, and that will produce a more
hackable installation of yt. It also comes with more headaches, for example
on 10.11 or newer users will be responsible for installing the OpenSSL
headers using e.g. homebrew or macports.

I know that in the past we've gone to great trouble to make sure people get
hackable installations of yt out of the box. The cost of that is
substantially increased pain of installation and also increased support
workload for developers who respond to mailing list and IRC questions. I
can easily set INST_YT_SOURCE=1 to be the default if the consensus is that
people should always get hackable yt installations (e.g. source install
with "setup.py develop" by default.

What do you all think?

-Nathan
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