pip install -r requirements-dev.txt uninstalls local installation of IDAES

[dallan-keylogic]

When creating a new Miniconda environment to work in IDAES-Examples, I first followed the IDAES advanced user installation then followed the guide in README-developer.md. However, I found that pip install -r requirements-dev.txt uninstalled my local install of IDAES and instead pulled a version from Github and froze it.

[jinliangma]

Doug,

I once had problems related to the binary code replaced by the new version (e.g. iapws property code), which made my old code not run. As I understand, conda environment only handles the python code, not the C/C++ binary code. I am not sure if this is the case for you.

Jinliang

[dallan-keylogic]

Jinliang, thanks for the tip. However, in this case, it's an issue with Python package installation, not dealing with different versions of the extensions. I've already fixed the problem locally, the purpose of this issue is to try to get requirements-dev.txt to acknowledge preexisting IDAES installations.

[lbianchi-lbl]

From the dev call:

• The current behavior is intended, as it is the most reliable way to ensure that a pre-release version of IDAES is installed in a developer environment and in (as opposed to e.g. expressing the requirement as idaes-pse without the git+ syntax)
• However, developing IDAES/examples locally against a local version of IDAES/idaes-pse is a common use case
• We could think of adding another requirements file, e.g. requirements-dev-idaes-pse.txt, for such a case; however, it's difficult to make assumptions on where the local installation target for idaes-pse would be located

Next steps:

• Add a note in the developer README documenting this behavior, and the workaround (i.e. reinstalling idaes-pse from the local clone after installing idaes-examples using requirements-dev.txt)