Conda installation did not work for me

[AllenDowney]

$ conda config --append channels NREL-PySAM

$ conda config --show channels
channels:
  - dsdale24
  - defaults
  - NREL-PySAM

$ conda install -c nrel nrel-pysam
Collecting package metadata (repodata.json): failed

UnavailableInvalidChannel: The channel is not accessible or is invalid.
  channel name: NREL-PySAM
  channel url: https://conda.anaconda.org/NREL-PySAM
  error code: 404

You will need to adjust your conda configuration to proceed.
Use `conda config --show channels` to view your configuration's current state,
and use `conda config --show-sources` to view config file locations.

[dguittet]

Hello @AllenDowney

The channel is called nrel not nrel-pysam, which is the name of the package. Try these instructions:

conda config --append channels NREL
conda install -c nrel nrel-pysam

If that doesn't work, I usually just do pip install NREL-PySAM. Hope that helps.

[lukereed]

Related issue.

When using a CI/CD service like AppVeyor or Azure Pipelines the nrel-pysam package is not found within the nrel channel.

The only difference I see from the available conda channels on the AppVeyor output below and my local machine is that the channels are win-32 on AppVeyor, and win-64 on my local machine. Are there examples of successful CI/CD builds using the NREL conda channel? Thanks!

Build started
ECHO %PYTHON_VERSION%
3.7
git clone -q --branch=trying_pysam https://github.com/resgroup/SolarSim.git C:\projects\solarsim
git checkout -qf 9a7b34d3a46ce14613202b39af47dc7bef5593e8
Running Install scripts
set PATH=C:\Miniconda3;C:\Miniconda3\Scripts;%PATH%
set PYTHONPATH=C:\projects\SolarSim
conda config --set always_yes yes --set changeps1 no
conda config --append channels NREL
conda install -c nrel nrel-pysam
Solving environment: ...working... failed
PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:
  - nrel-pysam
Current channels:
  - https://conda.anaconda.org/nrel/win-32
  - https://conda.anaconda.org/nrel/noarch
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/win-32
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/win-32
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/noarch
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/win-32
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/pro/win-32
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/pro/noarch
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/win-32
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/noarch
  - https://conda.anaconda.org/NREL/win-32
  - https://conda.anaconda.org/NREL/noarch
To search for alternate channels that may provide the conda package you're
looking for, navigate to
    https://anaconda.org
and use the search bar at the top of the page.
Command exited with code 1

[lukereed]

Update to previous comment:

nrel-pysam when installed on a remote machine must be using 64-bit architecture. If not, neither the conda nor the pip installations will work. This resolves the aforementioned related issue.

[dguittet]

Yes! In the README, it states that it must be 64-bit. Thanks for tracking down the cause.

We've stopped supporting SAM and all its repos for 32-bit machines. It's likely an easy configuration change to build it yourself using the Visual Studio projects.

Edit: Actually there's one change I'd have to make for PySAM to work on 32-bit machines, regarding the interpretation of pointers passed between python and the ssc library. Let me know if you want to pursue that and I can go ahead and enable that.