development in conda for aghast (ROOT)

[LovelyBuggies]

@henryiii, we might be forced to use conda env if we want to use ROOT in aghast, as mentioned in #28. Thus, we need a conda development guideline (and maybe even remove the venv guideline).

[henryiii]

At the end of that issue:

ROOT is not a requirement for hist or aghast

We will mostly use uproot, which can read and write (to an extent) ROOT files but is pure python. We might need a ROOT environment to do some extended testing, but otherwise we do not need to worry about it.

Aghast itself cannot talk to ROOT, but only uproot.

[henryiii]

See Vector or Uproot for an example of how to add a few extended tests in a conda environment for ROOT. Having it for extended testing is probably not a bad idea (though maybe that will only sit in Aghast? I'm not sure)

[jpivarski]

Aghast itself cannot talk to ROOT, but only uproot.

If that's currently true, then it will change. Aghast has to be able to read/write ROOT files on disk (importing uproot) and also convert from/to PyROOT objects in memory (importing ROOT). These are both useful targets for conversion.

[henryiii]

Okay, then we should provide extended testing that runs in a conda environment with ROOT available, to verify this works. Most users and the normal testing will still not require full ROOT, though.

[LovelyBuggies]

@henryiii @jpivarski I drafted a Conda development guideline Nino-hist/README.md in PR #14. Do you expect me to do the same job for hist, aghast, and boost-histogram (and some other packages 🤔️)? I'm doing it.