Build instructions are out of date

[rhkoulen]

I tried my very best to follow the installation instructions for python 3.5 on Windows. It seems like that wheel repo has changed since 2016... I tried my best to locate appropriate wheels (conda and pip have a nightmare trying to solve these versions). I got it almost right (only found scipy==1.0.0 for my hardware). Here's my pip freeze:

certifi==2018.8.24
cvxopt==1.2.7
cycler @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator/cycler-0.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
matplotlib @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator/matplotlib-1.5.2-cp35-cp35m-win_amd64.whl
numpy @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator/numpy-1.11.1-cp35-none-win_amd64.whl
pyparsing @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator/pyparsing-2.1.8-py2.py3-none-any.whl
python-dateutil @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator/python_dateutil-2.5.3-py2.py3-none-any.whl
pytz @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator/pytz-2016.6.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl
robotarium-python-simulator @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator
scipy @ file:///C:/Users/rhkou/Documents/robots/robotarium_python_simulator/scipy-1.0.0-cp35-none-win_amd64.whl
six==1.17.0
wincertstore==0.2

I was met almost immediately with an error upon running the first example:

>python rps\examples\plotting\barrier_certificates_with_plotting.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "rps\examples\plotting\barrier_certificates_with_plotting.py", line 1, in <module>
    import rps.robotarium as robotarium
  File "C:\Users\rhkou\miniforge3\envs\robotarium\lib\site-packages\rps\robotarium.py", line 7, in <module>
    from rps.robotarium_abc import *
  File "C:\Users\rhkou\miniforge3\envs\robotarium\lib\site-packages\rps\robotarium_abc.py", line 9, in <module>
    import rps.utilities.misc as misc
  File "C:\Users\rhkou\miniforge3\envs\robotarium\lib\site-packages\rps\utilities\misc.py", line 35
    raise ValueError(f"In the function generate_initial_conditions, "
                                                                    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

In this commit in 2025, f strings are added to the code. That's a python 3.6 feature. I legitimately have never manually touched a whl file in my life, and I feel kinda betrayed for having been forced to do so for no gain.

I'm mostly just making this issue to whine about the out-of-date README; I'll keep poking around. Once I get a build that's mostly functional, I'll export a conda build yaml for posterity and post it here.

[rhkoulen]

Alright, I got a build that mostly works. I can't tell what all is going to have backward compatibility issues. Numpy 2 certainly changes several signatures and deprecates several functions. I've set inequalities based on the versions that worked for me.

Only one example failed to run:

• consensus/consensus_fewer_errors.py (NameError: name 'dxi' is not defined, which I don't think is the environment's fault.)

To build the environment:

1. Have some installation of conda. I use miniforge3, stuck on v25.11.0 since the upgrade command doesn't work. I suspect any recent version of anaconda, miniconda, or miniforge would work just fine.
2. Put environment.yml (attached below) somewhere in your directory and cd there.
3. Run conda env create -f environment.yml
4. Run conda activate robotarium
5. Now the python keyword should point to a conda env that has everything ready.

environment.yml