Conda installation fails on Mac M1 architectures

[adonath]

I tried to install neost on a MacBook Pro M1 (2021) using conda and the provided environment.yml file. However it fails with:

Could not solve for environment specs
The following package could not be installed
└─ pymultinest is not installable because it requires
   └─ multinest, which does not exist (perhaps a missing channel).

And indeed there are no arm-64 coda builds for multinest (https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/multinest) available. The README.md mentions specific (limited) instructions for Mac (https://github.com/xpsi-group/neost?tab=readme-ov-file#installation-and-testing), however I cannot find those in the actual documentation (https://xpsi-group.github.io/neost/install.html).

Given that Mac users are very common in the scientific community I think it would be good to address installation on Mac specifically and also mentioned the support (or non-support) for ARM architectures.

[adonath]

Just a few more updates:

• Removing pymultinest from the environment.yml and installing it via pip instead works fine.

• However when trying to install neost using python -m pip install -e . it fails with:

  
  Obtaining file:///Users/adonath/github/xpsi-group/neost
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Checking if build backend supports build_editable ... done
  Getting requirements to build editable ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × Getting requirements to build editable did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [22 lines of output]
    GSL version: 2.7.1
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "/Users/adonath/software/mambaforge/envs/neost/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pyproject_hooks/_in_process/_in_process.py", line 353, in <module>
        main()
      File "/Users/adonath/software/mambaforge/envs/neost/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pyproject_hooks/_in_process/_in_process.py", line 335, in main
        json_out['return_val'] = hook(**hook_input['kwargs'])
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      File "/Users/adonath/software/mambaforge/envs/neost/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pyproject_hooks/_in_process/_in_process.py", line 132, in get_requires_for_build_editable
        return hook(config_settings)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      File "/private/var/folders/bt/7xysb53d3vj7m_snm7wt9jhc0000gp/T/pip-build-env-djepltmx/overlay/lib/python3.12/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 464, in get_requires_for_build_editable
        return self.get_requires_for_build_wheel(config_settings)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      File "/private/var/folders/bt/7xysb53d3vj7m_snm7wt9jhc0000gp/T/pip-build-env-djepltmx/overlay/lib/python3.12/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 332, in get_requires_for_build_wheel
        return self._get_build_requires(config_settings, requirements=[])
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      File "/private/var/folders/bt/7xysb53d3vj7m_snm7wt9jhc0000gp/T/pip-build-env-djepltmx/overlay/lib/python3.12/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 302, in _get_build_requires
        self.run_setup()
      File "/private/var/folders/bt/7xysb53d3vj7m_snm7wt9jhc0000gp/T/pip-build-env-djepltmx/overlay/lib/python3.12/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 318, in run_setup
        exec(code, locals())
      File "<string>", line 38, in <module>
    NameError: name 'os' is not defined. Did you mean: 'OS'? Or did you forget to import 'os'?
    [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error

× Getting requirements to build editable did not run successfully. │ exit code: 1 ╰─> See above for output.

note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.

[drannawatts]

Thanks @adonath we're looking into it! Well @nr1118 is :-D

[nr1118]

Hi @adonath, myself and @svisak have updated the installation instructions to discuss MAC M-series installation in the sense that we do have a definitive solution, but can offer some troubleshooting methods. Additionally, we have updated our setup.py file since it seems we forgot a simple import os in that file based on your most recent error message. Hopefully, all this will mean that you can install NEoST.