Clarification request for GeoCAT installation documentation

[erogluorhan]

From @duvivier :

"Honestly it was a bit confusing to follow how to do version updates for older GeoCAT packages in an existing conda environment just from the geocat documentation and be sure I was installing all the pieces of geocat (comp, viz, and datafiles separately). And the documentation doesn't have specific instructions for how to add geocat to an existing environment or updating it. Those would be useful things for those of us who are not python super-users."

[hCraker]

I'm working on the contributor's guide today to fix typos and some other things. This is next on my to-do list!

[erogluorhan]

Let us make use of this issue to address several different requests on the close proximity of this work. I will link those requests here below:

[erogluorhan]

Clarification needed for GeoCAT installation etc. on NCAR HPC resources. For instance, the GeoCAT-comp Issue #199 mentions it. We will need to figure how we should put this specific information, also keeping our documentation's language for general public.

[hCraker]

I'm first going to focus on adding any clarification for installing/updating GeoCAT in pre-existing conda environments, and then I'll address installation on NCAR resources. @erogluorhan do you know what documentation page Alice was looking at that needs clarification? I would ask her directly, but I'm unable to tag her here in this comment.

[erogluorhan]

It is probably either the GeoCAT-comp repository INSTALLATION.md file or GeoCAT-comp docs Installation page that is generated by docs/installation.rst file.

Here I have a few recommendations:

• Keeping both INSTALLATION.md and docs/installation.rst files up-to-date and consistent with each other is a duplication of work. We can get one of these files just link to the other one (e.g. See Uxarray's INSTALLATION.md that just links to UXarray docs installation page).
• Almost all of the GeoCAT repositories have both of such INSTALLATION.md and docs/installation.rst files, so please make sure to perform the work in each of them

[hCraker]

@erogluorhan Would you like me to link to the installation webpage in the INSTALLATION.md for each project repository as part of this issue?

[erogluorhan]

@erogluorhan Would you like me to link to the installation webpage in the INSTALLATION.md for each project repository as part of this issue?

I think yes, that would be easier for you, because otherwise, you would also need to update INSTALLATION.md file content in each repo to reflect whatever you have done in docs/installation.rst text. So, instead, please just put an informative text into INSTALLATION.md file in each repo that links to the RTD docs / Installation page of that repo (just like we did in Uxarray).

[hCraker]

Progress update of repos to update:

• GeoCAT-comp Clarify installation and updating instructions geocat-comp#214
• GeoCAT-examples Updating installation instructions geocat-examples#431
• GeoCAT-viz Added installation.rst geocat-viz#60
• GeoCAT-datafiles Update installation instructions and add PyPI publishing GH actions geocat-datafiles#31
• GeoCAT-f2py Updating installation info geocat-f2py#91

[hCraker]

All of the repos have been updated!

[erogluorhan]

Thanks you very much, this is great contribution, @hCraker !