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

[Alex Lindsay]

+1

On 06/20/2017 12:11 PM, John ZuHone wrote:
> +1
>
>> On Jun 20, 2017, at 1:08 PM, Michael Zingale 
>> <michael.zingale at stonybrook.edu 
>> <mailto: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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>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> 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
>> github: http://github.com/zingale
>>
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