Conda won't solve env

[CameronBodine]

    Thanks Cam, yes the install I was using was from a few months ago. I re-cloned the repository and am currently trying to create a new conda environment, but it get's stuck on "Solving environment", even after I let it go all night. Have you seen that before? I see the only difference is psutil. (Unrelated to this issue, let me know if I should post another).

Originally posted by @bthetford in https://github.com/CameronBodine/PINGMapper/issues/46#issuecomment-1373881207

[CameronBodine]

@bthetford I will take a look at this this morning. It may take me a bit, as install of the conda environment takes a while even when it does succeed. I will let you know!

[CameronBodine]

@AdrianPinchbeck I noticed on Twitter that you also had a similar problem updating to the latest ping conda env. What was you workaround?

[AdrianPinchbeck]

@CameronBodine I'm very new to this, but think this is what you're looking for. I couldn't see module psutil from within 'ping', however in 'base' it was clearly installed (using pip3 show psutil). I activated 'ping' and updated psutil using pip3 install psutil at the Anaconda prompt.

[CameronBodine]

Thanks @AdrianPinchbeck . I will keep investigating.

@bthetford as a workaround, if you still have your old ping env installed, go ahead and activate it, then run pip install psutil in the conda prompt, and you should be good to go.

For my own notes, I believe there are other issues with updated packages, even outside of psutil or gdal. Still investigating.

[AdrianPinchbeck]

Thought the issue was just my end, good luck!

[CameronBodine]

Ok @bthetford, trying running a git pull then running the installation again. It took a little over an hour for my computer to install. Not ideal, but hopefully you get it up and running. Please report back!

[CameronBodine]

In addition I ran 'conda clean --all' and 'conda update conda' before install.

[AdrianPinchbeck]

I think you're on the right track there Cameron, my investigations seemed to hint towards intolerance between versions. As I say though, I'm very green here.

[bthetford]

Thanks @CameronBodine, it must be an issue on my end, I can't even get through conda update conda, again it sticks on Solving environment indefinitely. I'll update here once I get it working. Beau

[bthetford]

Alright! Finally got this working: I uninstalled Anaconda3 and installed miniconda3 instead, to see if that would fix the solving environment issue, but the issue persisted. It finally worked after I installed libmamba and used that as the solver. With libmamba it finished solving in about 10 seconds! Woo!

NOTE: The first time I attempted to create the ping environment, I got the following error:

InvalidArchiveError("Error with archive C:\\Users\\b.thetford\\AppData\\Local\\miniconda3\\pkgs\\tensorflow-base-2.3.0-eigen_py38h75a453f_0.conda.  You probably need to delete and re-download or re-create this file.  Message was:\n\nfailed with error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 
C:\\\\Users\\\\b.thetford\\\\AppData\\\\Local\\\\miniconda3\\\\pkgs\\\\tensorflow-base-2.3.0-eigen_py38h75a453f_0\\\\Lib\\\\site-packages\\\\tensorflow\\\\include\\\\external\\\\llvm-project\\\\mlir\\\\_virtual_includes\\\\DerivedAttributeOpInterfaceIncGen\\\\mlir\\\\Interfaces\\\\DerivedAttributeOpInterface.cpp.inc'")

So I ran conda clean -a and it worked after that.

[CameronBodine]

Glad you got it working! I will make a note in the installation instructions that Mamba works much better. I have also switched over to miniconda and find it to function a bit better. Thanks for posting this info!

[CameronBodine]

Thanks so much for sharing the libmamba info @bthetford! It is much faster and now the recommended way of installing PING-Mapper. Thanks for the recommendation!

[bthetford]

Great, glad I could help! I found libmamba through a "conda never solves" stack exchange rabbit hole.