remove desiutil dependency

[sbailey]

specter should be experiment agnostic, and thus it shouldn't depend upon desiutil (even if desiutil is open source). Currently it depends upon desiutil in setup.py:

from desiutil.setup import DesiTest, DesiVersion, get_version

Understand the implications for desiInstall prior to removing this.

[weaverba137]

Changing this will not affect desiInstall, although the setup.py file will need some alternate method to set the version string.

I notice that specsim uses the astropy infrastructure as an alternative. @dkirkby, can you tell us if specsim is following the astropy-affiliated package specifications in detail, or did you just pick an choose a few items from the astropy infrastructure?

[dkirkby]

I am trying to follow them in detail, although I haven't taken the final step of actually registering the package within the astropy ecosystem.

Regarding the version string, the specsim setup.py includes:

# VERSION should be PEP386 compatible (http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0386)
VERSION = '0.2dev'

# Indicates if this version is a release version
RELEASE = 'dev' not in VERSION

if not RELEASE:
    VERSION += get_git_devstr(False)

which leads to strings like 0.2dev263.

[weaverba137]

OK, @dkirkby that's what I needed to know. For the record, that is the standard method of setting the version on astropy-affiliated packages, and I know it works. But you have to set it by hand. This requires extra-special care when creating a tag.

Since we already have one astropy-affiliated package in our ecosystem, adding another shouldn't be a problem.

[dkirkby]

They provide a straightfoward checklist that helps minimize tagging errors (which aren't too serious anyway since tags are not part of the read-only history).

[weaverba137]

Still waiting on an answer on the astropy-affiliated question.

[dkirkby]

Can you remind us what the outstanding question is?

[weaverba137]

Should specter switch to being an astropy-affiliated package just like specsim? Because we can't use the desiutil infrastructure for specter.

[weaverba137]

specter hasn't been tagged in a while, and it would be nice to resolve this question so that the next tag is easily installable.

[sbailey]

desiutil dependency removed as part of PR #30.