Consider packaging and distribution of vmecpp on conda-forge

[matthewfeickert]

It would be useful to have built distributions distributed on conda-forge. This would allow for people to install in a self contained and isolated environment in user space through Pixi.

This would mostly just require making a PR to https://github.com/conda-forge/staged-recipes and then following a recipe for an existing Python-with-compiled-extensions project like https://github.com/conda-forge/boost-histogram-feedstock. You note that

vmecpp/README.md

Line 224 in 3d6cbed

VMEC++ is currently not packaged for conda, but all its dependencies are and VMEC++

(though simsopt is a dependency that isn't, so I assume you're waiting for that too conda-forge/staged-recipes#32810)

I would be happy to help with the PR as well as answering any conda-forge related questions people might have.

[jons-pf]

Hey @matthewfeickert,
thanks for bringing this up.
Feel free to work on getting VMEC++ onto conda-forge.
I am afraid that we (Proxima Fusion) won't be able to invest any work into this, apart from reviewing/merging PRs.
Thanks in advance for any contributions though!

[matthewfeickert]

Feel free to work on getting VMEC++ onto conda-forge.

@jons-pf Sounds good. 👍

I am afraid that we (Proxima Fusion) won't be able to invest any work into this, apart from reviewing/merging PRs.

Would you or any of the other VMEC++ maintainers want to be listed as maintainers on the feedstock, with the understanding that you aren't going to do help out, so that you retain ownership control over the distribution of your software?

[jurasic-pf]

That would be useful, thanks for bringing it up.
Feel free to list me as a co-maintainer just in case.

[matthewfeickert]

Thanks and sounds good. While vmecpp's dependencies look straightforward to getting on conda-forge in general I realized that Abseil is in there

vmecpp/.gitmodules

Lines 7 to 9 in bb623a4

	[submodule "abseil-cpp"]
	path = abseil-cpp
	url = https://github.com/abseil/abseil-cpp.git

and Abesil is a framework that really wants you to use it from the source HEAD given its design philosophy. That being said, as you're already packaging vmecpp as wheels on PyPI I don't think this is an issue.

[jurasic-pf]

For context, the abseil build system has remained from when vmecpp was an internal tool, and is now redundant with the CMake setup used for wheel building to some extent.

It might not be necessary to include it in the distribution

[matthewfeickert]

and is now redundant with the CMake setup used for wheel building to some extent.

Ah, excellent! Thank you very much for that information, @jurasic-pf.

Given that, I will skip Abseil for the time being and as I already got abscab-cpp

vmecpp/.gitmodules

Lines 4 to 6 in bb623a4

	[submodule "abscab-cpp"]
	path = abscab-cpp
	url = https://github.com/jonathanschilling/abscab-cpp.git

on conda-forge (https://github.com/conda-forge/abscab-cpp-feedstock)

Version	Platforms

I'll add indata2json (well, I guess https://github.com/jonathanschilling/json-fortran and https://github.com/ORNL-Fusion/LIBSTELL before that given those are dependencies)

vmecpp/.gitmodules

Lines 10 to 12 in bb623a4

	[submodule "indata2json"]
	path = indata2json
	url = https://github.com/jonathanschilling/indata2json.git

and see if that's sufficient to build everything and pass tests.