Windows installation

[soizicg]

Hi all, I have been successfully installing parcels on linux and older versions on windows, however I have been having issues installing the last version on windows.
When I activate the parcels environment all is well, however if I try to use the parcel module I always get an error (see following text showing the output after parcel installation and trying to import parcel in the python terminal).
Also I realised that when I did the "pip install" the output showed "Successfully installed parcels-0.0.0" so it doesn't give the right parcels version.

I have tried to reinstall parcels a few times and I always get the same issue. Any help would be great, thanks.

(parcels) PS C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\oceanparcels\parcels-master> pip install --no-build-isolation --no-deps -e .
Obtaining file:///C:/Users/szg23nnj/Documents/oceanparcels/parcels-master
Checking if build backend supports build_editable ... done
Preparing editable metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: parcels
Building editable for parcels (pyproject.toml) ... done
Created wheel for parcels: filename=parcels-0.0.0-0.editable-py3-none-any.whl size=5603 sha256=44b365a317bdd8e87cc94e6d69f3010a432b80d5b7aa5855ec0a3c3c5abd8ebf
Stored in directory: C:\Users\szg23nnj\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-ephem-wheel-cache-6ge_gral\wheels\35\55\53\4b171eb195665592a828277d52805015af5382ebf95f09c83d
Successfully built parcels
Installing collected packages: parcels
Successfully installed parcels-0.0.0
(parcels) PS C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\oceanparcels\parcels-master> python
Python 3.12.3 | packaged by conda-forge | (main, Apr 15 2024, 18:20:11) [MSC v.1938 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

import parcels
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\oceanparcels\parcels-master\parcels_version.py", line 5, in
version = subprocess.check_output(['git', '-C', os.path.dirname(file), 'describe', '--tags'], stderr=subprocess.PIPE).decode('ascii').strip()
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\micromamba\envs\parcels\Lib\subprocess.py", line 466, in check_output
return run(*popenargs, stdout=PIPE, timeout=timeout, check=True,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\micromamba\envs\parcels\Lib\subprocess.py", line 571, in run
raise CalledProcessError(retcode, process.args,
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['git', '-C', 'C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\oceanparcels\parcels-master\parcels', 'describe', '--tags']' returned non-zero exit status 128.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
File "C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\oceanparcels\parcels-master\parcels_init_.py", line 1, in
from ._version import version
File "C:\Users\szg23nnj\Documents\oceanparcels\parcels-master\parcels_version.py", line 7, in
from parcels._version_setup import version as version # noqa
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'parcels._version_setup'

[erikvansebille]

Thanks for reporting, @soizicg. The preferred (and tested) method of installing Parcels on Windows is via Conda, see also the installation instructions. Can you see if that works for you?

Regardless, the missing parcels._version_setup could be because the following code in pyproject.toml is not executed
https://github.com/OceanParcels/parcels/blob/a8aeca841f4d7d4ce0e957c7eb7830b41a881cbb/pyproject.toml#L34-L36
May that be because of any of the options in your pip install (i.e. --no-build-isolation --no-deps -e)?

While we indeed have a pypi project for Parcels, I don't have enough experience with the pypi workflow to extensively test or maintain it. Help is very welcome!

[erikvansebille]

Ah ok, I see. And what if you simply do pip install ., like is done in the Github Action configuration (which does work for Windows)?
https://github.com/OceanParcels/parcels/blob/a8aeca841f4d7d4ce0e957c7eb7830b41a881cbb/.github/actions/install-parcels/action.yml#L30

[soizicg]

Good shout, I tried the pip install without any options and now it raised an error, including the following suggestion:

Make sure you're either building from a fully intact git repository or PyPI tarballs. Most other sources (such as GitHub's tarballs, a git checkout without the .git folder) don't contain the necessary metadata and will not work.

  For example, if you're using pip, instead of https://github.com/user/proj/archive/master.zip use git+https://github.com/user/proj.git#egg=proj

I was using the parcels code coming from the zip download, so I didn't use git to get the source code. Once I used the git clone function everything was solved!

Apologies, I should know better than to not closely follow the instructions :)
Thanks a lot.

[erikvansebille]

OK, it would be worth to mention on the installation page that this could be a solution for people who want to install the developer version on Windows

Which steps exactly did you take that worked?

And would you be willing to create a PR with a note at the bottom of https://github.com/OceanParcels/parcels/blob/master/docs/installation.rst? Or do you want me to add such a note?

[soizicg]

Actually your "Installation for developers" section is also good for Windows, I just used the steps given there.
My mistake was that I didn't exactly follow the step 2 since I used a zip download of the source code instead of using the "git clone" function.

But do you want me to be highlight in this section that this method is working for both Linux and Windows?

[erikvansebille]

Ah ok, in that case let's just leave the installation instructions as is...