Installation

Windows

The recommended way of installing niche_vlaanderen on windows uses miniconda for installation. The recommended version is 64 bit with Python 3.9.

The installation can proceed without administrator rights, keep the default options. After miniconda is installed, we will proceed installing niche_vlaanderen in its own environment.

Start the Anaconda prompt from the start menu

You will probably see something as:

  (C:\Users\myusername\Miniconda3) C:\Users\myusername>
OR
  (base) C:\Users\myusername>

Create an environment (called niche in this example) that will contain niche_vlaanderen and its dependencies:

(C:\Users\myusername\Miniconda3) C:\Users\myusername> conda create --name niche

Activate the niche environment:

(C:\Users\myusername\Miniconda3) C:\Users\myusername> conda activate niche

You will see that (C:\Users\myusername\Miniconda3)/(base) will change into (niche).

Now install the niche_vlaanderen package and its dependencies within the niche environment:

(niche) C:\Users\myusername> conda install pandas=1.5.3 pyyaml rasterio fiona
(niche) C:\Users\myusername> pip install niche_vlaanderen

It is strongly recommended to install also matplotlib (otherwise plotting will not work) and jupyter notebook, which allows interactive usage from a web browser.

(niche) C:\Users\myusername> conda install matplotlib jupyter

You can verify the installation was successful by running the command line interface. Note you must activate niche once more, because some changes were made during installation.

(C:\Users\myusername\Miniconda3) C:\Users\myusername> conda activate niche
(niche) C:\Users\myusername> niche --help
Usage: niche [OPTIONS] CONFIG

  Command line interface to the NICHE vegetation model

Options:
  --example  prints an example configuration file
  --version  prints the version number
  --help     Show this message and exit.

Upgrading

Existing installations of niche_vlaanderen can be updated using pip (run from the Anaconda prompt).

(C:\Users\myusername\Miniconda3) C:\Users\myusername> conda activate niche
(niche) C:\Users\myusername> pip install niche_vlaanderen --upgrade

Note you might need to update other packages.

Installing a specific version

If you want to install a specific niche_vlaanderen version, you can install using pip:

(C:\Users\myusername\Miniconda3) C:\Users\myusername> conda activate niche
(niche) C:\Users\myusername> pip install niche_vlaanderen==1.0

Alternative installation

It is possible to install niche_vlaanderen without using an environment. This is currently not the recommended installation as it requires setting an environment variable for opening some grid files. (See Missing gcs.csv file for instructions).

conda install pandas=1.5.3 pyyaml rasterio fiona
pip install niche_vlaanderen

Like for the normal installation, it is strongly recommended to install also matplotlib (otherwise plotting will not work) and jupyter notebook, which allows interactive usage from a web browser.

conda install matplotlib jupyter