Conda environments

[NoraLoose]

Right now, we provide the user with the following instructions (in the README and documentation):

i. Create a new conda environment containing any dependencies: conda create -n "cstar_environment python=3.12 pooch pyyaml

If you are installing on an M2 (Apple silicon) Mac, you'll also need to add:

compilers=1.6.0 netcdf-fortran=4.6.1 mpich=4.1.2 nco=5.1.8 -c conda-forge

It may also be worth including ipython,xarray,numpy, matplotlib and jupyter in the environment to work with any output, though these are not needed to run C-Star.

It would be good to automate this for the user and provide a few conda environments that the user can install and activate. We probably need multiple environments based on whether the user is on HPC or their laptop.

Action items

• [x] Create multiple environment_PLATFORM.yml files
• [x] Update installation instructions in README and documentation telling the user to
• clone the repo
• install and activate one of the provided conda environments
• type

  cd C-Star
  pip install -e .

[NoraLoose]

I think we can close this as this was done in #83, #90, #91.