New user install flow evaluation

[jackiekazil]

I was installing Mesa into a fresh environment & approaching it from a new users perspective...

pip install mesa 
<pick example> 
solara run app.py

solara gives me this error:

Could not import SolaraViz. If you need it, install with 'pip install --pre mesa[viz]'

so then I run:

pip install --pre mesa[viz]

which returns:

zsh: no matches found: mesa[viz]

How do we fix this / make it easier for users?

[quaquel]

First, that --pre remark should not be there because it will break the solara dependencies.

Second, debate whether the ui is part of the default stuff that should just work or not.

[EwoutH]

viz is a defined extra, so that can’t be it. Claude sounds plausible:

The problem is actually related to how the shell (zsh in your case) interprets the square brackets.

When you try to run pip install --pre mesa[viz], the zsh shell tries to interpret [viz] as a pattern matching expression, which is why you get the "no matches found" error. This is a common issue with zsh and bash when dealing with package extras.

Here are two ways to fix this:

1. Escape the brackets or quote the entire package name:

pip install --pre "mesa[viz]"
# OR
pip install --pre mesa\[viz\]

2. Use the alternative syntax with quotes:

pip install --pre 'mesa[viz]'

For making this easier for users, I can suggest a few approaches:

1. Update the documentation to explicitly show the quoted version:

pip install --pre "mesa[viz]"

2. Add a note explaining that shell users may need to quote or escape the brackets.

3. Consider providing a requirements.txt or similar that includes the visualization dependencies by default.

[quaquel]

Note that on the landing page on read the docs in the installation part, the zsh error is explicitly mentioned:

On a Mac, this command might cause an error stating zsh: no matches found: mesa[all]. In that case, change the command to pip install -U "mesa[rec]".

[jackiekazil]

I wonder if some of the issues with #141 are related to this. People haven't gone into detail on their bugs, so this is only conjecture.

[2guud4u]

@jackiekazil I tried the above and ran into this error when importing mesa. Not sure if this is a problem only only end or not:
partially initialized module 'pandas' has no attribute '_pandas_datetime_CAPI' (most likely due to a circular import)
Note: this is on a fresh conda env

[jackiekazil]

@2guud4u can you file new issue for your problem? (The issue filing process will help us understand the complete issue you are having.) https://github.com/projectmesa/mesa/issues/new/choose