pip install options need documentation

[nlaws-camus]

What does one get with:
pip install altdss[all]

vs.

pip install altdss?

Are there other installation options?

This sort of information should be in the top level README as well as near the top of the pypi documentation and the getting started page

[PMeira]

Certainly not a priority from my PoV, maybe when a v1.0 is out and things are stable enough. There's a note somewhere, we can add something more explicit in the next opportunity.

There's always pip install --dry-run --ignore-installed ... (since 2022), which I would recommend anyone using Python to try anyway to avoid broken environments, especially when mixing sources/installers, e.g. conda and pip. Frankly, since there are dependencies of dependencies, it's easier to try a dry run to resolve the whole tree, but for this project, it's not something hard to find:

• https://github.com/dss-extensions/AltDSS-Python/blob/0.2.4/pyproject.toml#L23-L28
• https://github.com/dss-extensions/AltDSS-Python/blob/0.2.4/pyproject.toml#L72
• https://github.com/dss-extensions/DSS-Python/blob/0.15.7/pyproject.toml#L78

[nlaws-camus]

Ok any timeline for v1.0? I like what AltDSS brings to the table but it's beta status is a non-starter.

And the answer my question is that the all parameter gets passed to dss-python, which takes it to mean:

all = [
    "matplotlib",
    "scipy",
    "opendssdirect-py[extras]",
    "altdss",
    "pandas",
]

?
So what do we lose if we do not use the all parameter? I.e. what functionality of altdss is lost?

[PMeira]

Ok any timeline for v1.0? I like what AltDSS brings to the table but it's beta status is a non-starter.

I'd say around 2-3 months, the first month is work being finished in the engine.

The first version of the code was published as DSS.Obj under DSS-Python on 2022-07-14. The basics have not changed since then, but we might change function/property names, and adjust some of what is exposed as functions vs. properties.

So what do we lose if we do not use the all parameter? I.e. what functionality of altdss is lost?

Plotting (requires matplotlib and its deps), OpenDSSDirect.py and deps (including networkx, which I think we don't really use besides examples, for now). Later on we might decouple DSS-Python so we don't depend on it, keeping it fully optional.