[Ifeffit] Issue with Larch interacting with other software

[Matt Newville]

Hi Luke,


On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 5:58 AM Luke Townsend <l.townsend at sheffield.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Apologies if this has been brought up previously but I wanted to see if
> anyone else has had some issues with other software installed on the
> computer interacting with Larch (particularly XAS Viewer) and resulting in
> Larch no longer functioning. A couple of colleagues/students have been
> running into this issue with the SEM software AZtec.
>
> The error code that has been reported is (I'm not sure how helpful this
> is):
>
> 'Entry Point Not Found - The procedure entry point H5Literate could not be
> located in the dynamic link library C:\Program Files\Oxford Instruments
> NanoAnalysis\AZtec\x64\HDF5_hl.dll.'
>
> If anyone has any suggestions for resolving this (without having to run
> two separate computers for each software which is our current work around)
> it'd be thoroughly appreciated.
>

Hmm, Sorry for the trouble. I don't know what would cause that.  It *should
be* that (by default) Larch installs its own Python interpreter and a full
stack of libraries and never looks or notices if there happens to be some
other Python environment installed.    You *can* install it into an
existing Python environment -- that is allowed and not even really
discouraged, but it is sort of "advanced usage" in that it at least opens
up the possibility of conflicts.

That error message looks like Python is somehow seeing the HDF5 library
files from the Oxford AZtec installation.  I don't know why it would find
that.   I might suggest a few things in the "testing why this could be" and
a couple in the "workaround" category.

First, to track down why this happens, If you open a Python interpreter (or
even a "Larch CLI buffer", if that can run) you could try this:

     import h5py
     print(h5py.__version__)
     print(h5py.__file__)


For "workaround", first can you confirm what the Larch installation folder
is?  Like, did you install from the installer to
C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\xraylarch
or something similar?   Have you tried re-installing Larch?  I'm not
certain that will help....

You might also check if there is some environmental variable that points or
that AZtec folder.  I think that H5PY does not use environmental variables,
so I'm not sure what to look for here.  But, you might just check what
"PATH" is, and maybe adjust that (maybe removing references to AZtec, at
least temporarily, or for a "launcher batch file" for Larch / XAS Viewer).

I hope that gives a few things to try that will help,

--Matt
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