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LSSTDESC / rail

Top level "umbrella" package for RAIL
MIT License
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Reexamine the "getting started" documentation #16

Closed drewoldag closed 1 year ago

drewoldag commented 1 year ago

We recently had a user attempt to install RAIL, and theyy found the instructions quite complicated. We should revamp the instructions to make them more user friendly.

drewoldag commented 1 year ago

@drewoldag will sync with the user to get a concrete list of problem points.

aimalz commented 1 year ago

Relatedly, the README currently tells users to get permission from the DESC PZ WG conveners to use RAIL for science, which seems counterproductive (and potentially in conflict with our license), so we should also take the opportunity to revise that to reflect the open nature of the code and limited applicability of the DESC Publication Policy to the broader community.

OliviaLynn commented 1 year ago

Adding some notes here while it's fresh in mind:

sschmidt23 commented 1 year ago

There seems to, in general, be a lag in updating pip vs conda for some packages. For my M1 mac I've had occasional issues with some/all of: pywavelets, healpy, fitsio, and jax/jaxlib when installed from pip. So, I generally conda install these before I install pip install RAIL. I think a few of these have now been "fixed" (i.e. the people managing the projects updated their pip distros to match the ones on conda). This isn't really a bug, but it should probably be mentioned in the install instructions to aid users. Because this could change at any time, maybe a phrasing more like:

We note that developers sometimes do not update their PyPI installers as regularly as they do conda.  If you see an install error on a particular package (for example, we've run into issues with pywavelets, healpy, jax/jaxlib, and fits), installing with conda rather than pip with e.g. 
conda install -c conda-forge healpy
may solve the issue
sschmidt23 commented 1 year ago

Oh, and adding another point of confusion that I've seen: we had a user wanting to run Flexzboost, which has now been moved from the core RAIL package to its own package. She did not see Flexzboost in RAIL, and wondered how to install it, or even if it had been removed. So, we apparently need some clarification in the install instructions stating that BPZ, FlexZBoost, and Delight have been moved to their own packages, and can be pip installed separately.

drewoldag commented 1 year ago

I left some notes about what it took for me to go from a brand new, pristine, virtual environment to a completed run of goldenspike in this journal. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HGv0UuT0khlXtAUJF2IIPabs_Gsr77AOw-tG0rXI7y4/edit#heading=h.fs1v8hq3cdc4

If anyone happens to pick up this ticket in the near future, they can use those instructions to help guide them.

aimalz commented 1 year ago

As noted in today's tag-up, this ought to include some description of our workflow, e.g. merging PRs, tagging issues, etc. @eacharles Please feel free to add anything I missed from the call!

OliviaLynn commented 1 year ago

Today's tag-up brought up healpy installation issues: users may need to conda install healpy instead of pip (potentially just Mac M1, M2 users)

eacharles commented 1 year ago

It looks to me like everything here is also covered in https://github.com/LSSTDESC/rail/issues/51. I propose we close this and move move that one into the rail 1.0 project