Hi Folks,

Though I've resisted making an announcement about each minor release of Larch, I wanted to let everyone know about an important change starting with the latest release.

As both Bruce and I (and Sam, and probably anyone who has tried) have experienced, and many of you have witnessed from discussions on this list, building and maintaining binary installers for various Windows and Macintosh generations is a painful and time-/resource-consuming. For Larch, as with Demeter, Windows installers have been possible but real work, and Macintosh installers have been much more difficult.

Starting with Larch 0.9.27, I'm recommending that folks using Mac OSX and Windows use the free version of Anaconda Python 2.7 from ContinuumIO (https://www.continuum.io/). Anaconda Python comes with a very large set of the standard scientific Python libraries as well as visualization and development tools. I highly recommend this package for anyone interested in learning scientific programming.

For Larch, the main benefits of this approach are 1) very easy installation and upgrades to packages, and 2) that the default installation goes into the users home directory, and so can easily be modified (or deleted) by the user without administrative privileges.

To install Larch with Anaconda Python, the instructions (see http://xraypy.github.io/xraylarch/installation/index.html) are:

1. Download and Install Anaconda Python from
https://www.continuum.io/downloads

2. Open a Command Line Terminal
Windows: From the Start Menu, open an Anaconda Shell

Mac OSX: Applications->Utilities->Terminal

and type:

conda install -c newville xraylarch

This will install all the basic software for Larch, and all the installed programs

can be run from this terminal.

3. To create "clickable icons" (Windows shortcuts or Mac Applications) type:
larch_makeicons

       in the same Terminal window. This will create a Folder named Larch on
       your desktop with several Larch applications in it. Because these are on
       your desktop, you can move, rename, or delete these without affecting
       any other software.

4. To update Larch at any time, you will be able to open a Terminal and type:
conda update -c newville xraylarch

For Linux, Anaconda is a fine choice, but seems slightly less important as the standard package managers have most of the required packages available, and a source installation of Larch is very easy.

Installing with Anaconda includes all the source code for the Larch plugins in "share/larch/plugins" under the anaconda folder in your home directory (or under AppData on Windows). These are dynamically loaded by Larch, so you can still explore and modify the analysis procedures. However, installing with Anaconda does not include local copies of the documentation or examples. This may change in future release, but for now these will be made available for each release at
http://cars.uchicago.edu/xraylarch/downloads/docs/

Let me know if you have any questions or trouble with any of this.

--Matt