Cannot 'pip install xhydro' on windows about xhydro HOT 2 OPEN

@Sci-pio Thanks for raising the issue. This has been on my backlog for a few weeks (shoutout to @richardarsenault).

The situation here is pretty simple: In order to install RavenPy you must have system-level NetCDF4 libraries in order to compile the RavenHydroFramework model (supplied by the raven-hydro package on PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/raven-hydro/). We don't offer wheels (binaries) on PyPI since there are a lot of configurations possible (Widows/macOS/Linux * x86_64/x86/AArch64/PowerPC/etc.). Each binary has a size of around 3 MB, and space is limited on PyPI.

There's also the issue around licensing of binaries. We would need to be compiling a library that provides NetCDF4 and the RavenHydroFramework library. Each of these have licensing specifications that we need to respect: NetCDF-C and RavenHydroFramework. In order to provide a binary for RavenHydroFramework on PyPI (via raven-hydro), the Artistic License 2.0 asks that we add a bunch of documentation, which is feasible but is extra effort. I can open a ticket about this.

The alternative approach is to have the NetCDF4 libraries on your system already. Unidata provides some pre-built binaries of NetCDF4 (https://docs.unidata.ucar.edu/netcdf-c/current/winbin.html), but unfortunately, installing these libraries requires access to a Windows 10/11 UI (AFAIK, there are no command-line approaches to installing these libraries; believe me, I've spent many hours looking into this, but if you know of a way, please share it!).

If Anaconda Python is not available, this makes it nearly impossible to ensure Windows support in a pure Python installation is guaranteed.

All this being said, here's my suggestion:

1. Install the NetCDF4 binaries in your Windows system, ensuring that they're available in your shell (try running $ nc-config to test this).
2. Then try installing raven-hydro: $ pip install raven-hydro
3. If that all works, try installing xhydro aftewards: $ pip install xhydro.

If it's alright with you, I'd like to transfer this issue to https://github.com/Ouranosinc/raven-hydro since it really belongs there. Would that be alright?

from xhydro.

@Sci-pio Please post any updates in Ouranosinc/raven-hydro#41. Transferring issues between organisations isn't allowed.

from xhydro.