Dear Christopher, I have bad news for you. I’m the official MacPorts maintainer of Demeter, and I have not been able to overcome the problems you’re seeing. I’ve seen them too over the last 1-2 years. The ifeffit package has unaddressed problems
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Dear Christopher,

I have bad news for you. I’m the official MacPorts maintainer of Demeter, and I have not been able to overcome the problems you’re seeing. I’ve seen them too over the last 1-2 years. The ifeffit package has unaddressed problems that have become fatal. I believe they correspond to small incompatibilities with the latest compilers. Over time, code that used to be allowed eventually became deprecated with a warning, and is now an error.

As Matt helpfully explained (thanks, Matt!), ifeffit is basically replaced by Larch, and no one wants to update ifeffit to fix problems of that sort.

Unfortunately, Demeter, Artemis, and Athena do still depend on ifeffit, and there’s no clear path to integrate that front end with the physics back end of Larch. Or at least, I discussed this a few years ago with the Demeter and Larch authors, and they didn’t see one.

If indeed Larch can replace (99% of) the functionality that used to be in the Demeter and ifeffit ports in the MacPorts project, then I am inclined to remove those ports entirely from MacPorts. Otherwise, they are just sitting there, broken.

By the way, I have created a `py-xraylarch` port. You could use it, although I don’t particularly recommend that. I’d suggest you use its usual installation options (such as `pip install xraylarch`). Honestly, the pip-based installation is getting so capable these days that I question why we even need MacPorts to package up any python code at all. (Should I ask that in public?)

Why not use the MacPorts port? Because I’m the maintainer but not an actual user—I don’t regularly update upstream versions or make it work with the latest Python because of all its dependencies that first have to be updated. For instance, last summer I tried to make a Python 3.11 version, but I was stymied by the lack of Python 3.11 releases by some dependency. I lost interest and haven’t checked in months whether that was resolved.

On the other hand, you (obviously) already installed MacPorts, so it’s at least an option if the pip method gives you trouble.

Best wishes,
Joe Fowler
NIST Boulder Labs

p.s. Here’s a politically charged question. Has this mailing list’s name falling out of sync with its range of topics, given that ifeffit is finished?

On May 9, 2024, at 10:51 AM, ifeffit-request@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov wrote:

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Today's Topics:

  1. Trouble downloading Demeter for mac (Christopher Reitwiesner)
  2. Re: Trouble downloading Demeter for mac (Matt Newville)

From: Christopher Reitwiesner <christopher.reitwiesner@uconn.edu>
Subject: [Ifeffit] Trouble downloading Demeter for mac
Date: May 8, 2024 at 1:37:46 PM MDT
To: ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov


This Message Is From an External Sender
This message came from outside your organization.
Hello! 
I am an undergraduate researcher looking to utilize Demeter. Unfortunately I only have access to a mac. I followed the instructions on the github page. Downloading MacPorts went fine, so did installing Command Line Developer Tools. However when trying to install demeter from Terminal, I eventually run into this error message:

Building ifeffit
Error: Failed to build ifeffit: command execution failed
Error: See /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_macports_release_tarballs_ports_science_ifeffit/ifeffit/main.log for details.
Error: Follow https://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets if you believe there
is a bug.
Error: Processing of port demeter failed


I am at a loss on where to go from here and was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction.

Thank you for your time! 
Christopher Reitwiesner 



From: Matt Newville <newville@cars.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: [Ifeffit] Trouble downloading Demeter for mac
Date: May 9, 2024 at 10:51:01 AM MDT
To: XAFS Analysis using Ifeffit <ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov>


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This message came from outside your organization.
Hi Christopher, 

Installing Demeter on macOS has always been painful.  The MacPorts solution can work sometimes, but it does require some expertise to use MacPorts and to think about the software as something that needs to be compiled and built.    Some of the packages needed (especially "ifeffit" and "wxPerl") are just not very well supported.  At this point, I cannot recommend using the old ifeffit - it has too many known issues that will not be fixed.

I know that using a virtual Windows interface like Parallels works for some people.

But, if you are just getting started, I highly recommend installing Larch, either using the installer at https://xraypy.github.io/xraylarch/installation.html(you'll have to go into Privacy & Security and allow the installer from "an untrusted source" to run. Also, it might say that it has less than a minute to go for about 5 minutes ;) ), or by downloading and running the GetLarch script at https://xraypy.github.io/xraylarch/installation.html#install-scripts and running that from a Terminal. 

With this installed, the Larix App (in the Larch folder on your Desktop: also, the first launch might take a minute) will run and do basically everything that Athena and Artemis do.  There are some differences, and there may be a missing feature or two, but many things are better.  In general, comments, complaints, and suggestions are welcome.  We aim for "highly compatible and familiar"  with Demeter and "better than" the underlying ifeffit library.

And, it does install and run on macOS. It turns out that most of the development and testing happens on macOS.

Cheers,

--Matt


On Wed, May 8, 2024 at 2:54 PM Christopher Reitwiesner <christopher.reitwiesner@uconn.edu> wrote:
This Message Is From an External Sender
This message came from outside your organization.
 
Hello! 
I am an undergraduate researcher looking to utilize Demeter. Unfortunately I only have access to a mac. I followed the instructions on the github page. Downloading MacPorts went fine, so did installing Command Line Developer Tools. However when trying to install demeter from Terminal, I eventually run into this error message:

Building ifeffit
Error: Failed to build ifeffit: command execution failed
Error: See /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_macports_release_tarballs_ports_science_ifeffit/ifeffit/main.log for details.
Error: Follow https://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets if you believe there
is a bug.
Error: Processing of port demeter failed


I am at a loss on where to go from here and was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction.

Thank you for your time! 
Christopher Reitwiesner 
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--Matt Newville <newville at cars.uchicago.edu> 630-327-7411


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