Installation and Compatibility with Different Operating Systems.

[MCruzReyes]

I am not sure, but it seems that the GaiaUnlimited tools are not compatible with Windows. However, this is not explained in the documentation.

It is not compatible, because one of the libraries that are needed (healpy) is not compatible with Windows.

The issue appears when I run the following command on Windows pip install gaiaunlimited

the issues does not appear on Linux

Error:

ERROR: Failed building wheel for healpy
Failed to build healpy
ERROR: Could not build wheels for healpy, which is required to install pyproject.toml-based projects

Python version: Python 3.9.7

Operative system: Windows 10

[mfouesneau]

This error is from Healpy, not Gaia Unlimited.

[agabrown]

True, but let's see if we can do something to address this

[TristanCantatGaudin]

The documentation now mentions that the package can be installed inside a Google Colab notebook (e.g. shell call !pip install gaiaunlimited or the cell magic %pip install gaiaunlimited) which might help users who have issues with local installation.

[mfouesneau]

Healpy is aware of this issue: https://github.com/healpy/healpy/issues/25

[agabrown]

Let's keep it open until we are sure we cannot replace healpy functionality with an alternative.

[kjkoeller]

Have any alternatives been found or implemented yet?

[TristanCantatGaudin]

Unfortunately no alternative so far, although the colab option does work well.

We keep debating whether to switch to astropy's healpix implementation, but currently it doesn't have the plotting capabilities of healpy.

[agabrown]

Given the above discussion, this will not be done.