Installing ESMValTool in Windows

[ledm]

Hi,

We've been contacted by Seyed Mohammad Mousavi from the University of Tehran via twitter about installing ESMValTool in Windows: https://twitter.com/mohammad_seyedd/status/1434934268095090692

I know it's not fully supported, but perhaps someone could outline an installation strategy that could work for him?

Cheers!

[seyedmohammad19]

Hi,

We've been contacted by Seyed Mohammad Mousavi from the University of Tehran via twitter about installing ESMValTool in Windows: https://twitter.com/mohammad_seyedd/status/1434934268095090692

I know it's not fully supported, but perhaps someone could outline an installation strategy that could work for him?

Cheers!

thank you mr Lee

[zklaus]

I appreciate the sentiment, but I think at the moment it really is not possible to run the tool under Windows. I might be wrong.

[valeriupredoi]

unfortunately Klaus is right, too many issues with unresolved conflicts from dependencies. The only viable solution is to set up a Linux Virtual Machine on Windows, which is very easy to do these days - either with Azure or VirtualBox, see e.g. https://www.lifewire.com/install-ubuntu-linux-windows-10-steps-2202108

[malininae]

Actually, I managed to install python part on Windows10. It was about a year ago, but one can do it through the native linux subsysem for windows (ubuntu LST).

[zklaus]

Interesting! Do you think you could write up a half-page summary of that? I imagine it goes something like

1. Install conda
2. Run conda install esmvaltool-python
3. Profit

?

[malininae]

@zklaus Sure, I was actually thinking to propose to write directions to the readthedocs, what do you think? I am usually working with the source code though, since I was mostly developing the diagnostics for AR6. Out of curiosity, I tried yesterday to install the latest version of the tool from the source code to my new windows computer, and it did work. This being said, I have my personal workaround and would suggest couple of tips to a person working with the tool with windows. It might be a bit hacky but it works quite well.
@seyedmohammad19 do you have admin access to your windows machine? The directions are a bit different depending on the answer.

[zklaus]

@malininae, if you write it directly in the docs, that would be even better! Feel free to start a draft PR on it. Let me know if you need help.

[valeriupredoi]

cheers @malininae - that's quite encouraging 🍺

[bouweandela]

In our tutorial, we have the following information:

ESMValTool does not directly support Windows, but successful usage has been reported through the Windows Subsystem for Linux(WSL), available in Windows 10. To install the WSL please follow the instructions on the Windows Documentation page. After installing the WSL, installation can be done using the same instructions for Linux/MacOSX.

[glpotter]

I managed to get ESMvaltool installed on a WSL (Linux subsystem in Windows 11) but I am having a problem installing the esmvaltools development tools. I have followed the instructions and get all of the proper responses down to esmvaltool --help. But when I try "pip install -e .[development]" I get:
$ pip install -e .[development]
Obtaining file:///home/potter/ESMVALTOOL
ERROR: file:///home/potter/ESMVALTOOL does not appear to be a Python project: neither 'setup.py' nor 'pyproject.toml' found.

I must be missing a step somewhere. I tried it in a previous subsystem and this worked.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks

[malininae]

@glpotter do you install the tool from source?

[bouweandela]

It looks like you may be running the pip install -e .[development] command from the wrong directory. It needs to be run in the ESMValTool directory (where you can see the ESMValTool source code as it is in this repository). The . in that command is the path to the source code.

[glpotter]

OK,
I installed esmvaltool using:
mamba create --name esmvaltool esmvaltool 'python=3.10'
mamba install esmvaltool-python esmvaltool-ncl

but the directory:
ESMVALTOOL
only has:
environment.yml

It seems this worked on an earlier installation but the directory is missing a number of files and directories.

I must be missing a step.

[bouweandela]

Hi Jerry,

That's all there is to it if you want to do an installation where you can just use the tool (try conda activate esmvaltool and esmvaltool --help, you should see that the tool works. It looks like you followed these instructions.

However, if you would like to edit the source code, I recommend following the instructions for installation from source. Those can be found here.