[yt-dev] Proposal: Eliminate INST_CONDA=0 from install script

[Michael Zingale]

this change sounds good to me.

On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 12:09 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Nathan,
>
> Unexpectedly, I find myself in agreement with you.  I think we should
> ditch INST_CONDA=0, now that yt is able to be installed in a multitude
> of ways, and now that the dependency stack is also much easier to
> install.
>
> This will also lighten the burden of maintenance that we put on
> ourselves when we add optional or explicit dependencies.
>
> -Matt
>
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 11:04 AM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > If anyone followed the e-mail thread on yt-users between me and Carla
> > Bernhardt, they'd see that we had a lot of difficultly dealing with the
> > INST_CONDA=0 option in the install script.
> >
> > This option reverts the install script to "legacy" mode, installing yt
> and
> > all of yt's dependencies from source rather than using miniconda and
> conda
> > packages to bootstrap a python environment.
> >
> > The problem is that the packages that get installed must be manually and
> > laboriously updated. In practice this means packages are basically never
> > updated. This also means the script installs relatively old versions of
> > libraries (currently, matplotlib 1.5.1, numpy 1.11) simply because no one
> > has taken the time to go through the list of libraries installed and
> update
> > them. This means anyone who uses this option isn't benefiting from
> upstream
> > bugfixes. It also means we risk bitrot.
> >
> > In practice, I don't think I've recently heard of a situation where
> > INST_CONDA=1 failed but INST_CONDA=0 did not.
> >
> > The other option of course is for someone to step up and take
> responsibility
> > for updating the INST_CONDA=0 section of the install script. I'd be
> happy to
> > help out with that if anyone wants to volunteer.
> >
> > However, without a maintainer, I think we are doing our users a
> disservice
> > by leaving this option available.
> >
> > If we *do* eliminate this option, we immediately reap the following
> > benefits:
> >
> > * The install script can be trimmed down by several hundred lines
> > * We can simplify the install-script based install instructions in the
> docs
> > * It becomes easier to test modifications to the install script because
> > there are fewer permutations to test.
> >
> > Please let me know what you think. I'd especially like to hear from
> people
> > who are fans of INST_CONDA=0 or who recently used it with no issues.
> >
> > -Nathan
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org
> > http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
> >
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>



-- 
Michael Zingale
Associate Professor

Dept. of Physics & Astronomy • Stony Brook University • Stony Brook, NY
11794-3800
*phone*:  631-632-8225
*e-mail*: Michael.Zingale at stonybrook.edu
*web*: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/mzingale
github: http://github.com/zingale
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