Version issues with `pip install -e`

[AreWeDreaming]

When I create an environment for imas-python using the conda-feedstock by:

mamba create -n imas-python-conda --only-deps imas-python

and then subsequently build imas-python locally for development with

pip install --no-deps --no-build-isolation -e .

with the latest version of develop, I get:

Obtaining file:///home/denks/IDA/IDA/IMAS-Python
  Checking if build backend supports build_editable ... done
  Preparing editable metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: imas-python
  Building editable for imas-python (pyproject.toml) ... done
  Created wheel for imas-python: filename=imas_python-0.0.0-0.editable-py3-none-any.whl size=10303 sha256=8f1f5c35bf499ba7258803d9a6bcd735bb08237d7d0b2a1ebd2cffceadb6aa78
  Stored in directory: /tmp/pip-ephem-wheel-cache-abpy5fmq/wheels/81/32/c7/076deb29ff3d6fe8c0caefa5b0feac12e07b60028843e342be
Successfully built imas-python
Installing collected packages: imas-python
Successfully installed imas-python-0.0.0

which means I have just installed imas-python-0.0.0 which clearly is not the correct version string. This could be a problem of the feedstock https://github.com/conda-forge/imas-python-feedstock/blob/main/recipe/recipe.yaml but I cannot see any obvious problem. Maybe a missing requirement? I understand that this feedstock is out of date (see issue #128 ) so maybe just updating the dependencies and rerendering it after #128 is fixed is sufficient.

[munechika-koyo]

I think the --only-deps option installs only runtime dependencies. Therefore, versioning the package requires setuptools_scm as one of its host dependencies.
If --no-build-isolation is turned off, it should work well. (pip will install backend packages written at [build-system.requires] in pyproject.toml.)

[AreWeDreaming]

Yes but in that case this setuptools_scm should be in the requirements of the conda package, no?

[munechika-koyo]

That should be written at requirements.host table.

[maarten-ic]

I expect it's because the git archives (which the recipe uses) don't include version information, so setuptools-scm doesn't know how to version it. Looks like we can make it work as described here: https://setuptools-scm.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage/#git-archives.

An alternative option (though I don't know if this is supported by your tool) is to install directly from a git url:

(venv)$ pip install 'imas-python @ git+https://github.com/iterorganization/IMAS-Python.git@develop'
[...]
Successfully installed [...] imas-python-2.2.1.dev13 [...]

[munechika-koyo]

This document explains how to use setuptools-scm for conda-forge builds: https://conda-forge.org/docs/maintainer/knowledge_base/#using-setuptools_scm.

I guess @AreWeDreaming tried to build imas-python from source in the conda virtual environment.
The conda package for imas-python does(/should) not offer any build-time dependency.
So, you should install setuptools-scm via conda as well when building or installing imas-python from source if you want to use a conda virtual environment.