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

[John ZuHone]

+1

> On Jun 20, 2017, at 1:08 PM, Michael Zingale <michael.zingale at stonybrook.edu> wrote:
> 
> this change sounds good to me.  
> 
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 12:09 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com <mailto: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 <mailto: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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> >
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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 <mailto:Michael.Zingale at stonybrook.edu>
> web: http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/mzingale <http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/mzingale>
> github: http://github.com/zingale <http://github.com/zingale>
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