A methodology should be implemented to handle dependences for examples.

[Devin-Crawford]

📝 Description of the feature

I suggest a method be implemented to check for and update dependencies for examples. Since the examples are very broad and general, it does not make sense to include all dependencies for all examples. Instead, one might create a list of packages (or dict with package name as the key and version string as the value) and pass that dict to a function that will update the local Python environment.

💡 Steps for implementing the feature

The example could then look like:

add_packages = ["plotly": ">=5.6.0", "matplotlib": "latest"]
update = check_packages(update=True, add_packages)

The code from the EMIT example could be used as a reference to create the check_packages() function:

reqs = subprocess.check_output([sys.executable, "-m", "pip", "freeze"])
installed_packages = [r.decode().split("==")[0] for r in reqs.split()]

# Install required packages if they are not installed
def install(package):
    subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, "-m", "pip", "install", package])


# Install plotly (if needed) to display legend and
# scenario matrix results (internet connection needed)
required_packages = ["plotly"]
for package in required_packages:
    if package not in installed_packages:
        install(package)

🔗 Useful links and references

No response

[SMoraisAnsys]

I'm not too favorable with this approach for multiple reasons. Some can be argued as we provide example ourselves and control everything but for others I have concerns:

• version control can't be achieved with that approach and new version of a package could be incompatible with the code
• executing subprocess calls can present security issues (arguable since we control the code of the examples)
• portability might be an issue as every user might have a different python configuration (arguable)
• separating preoccupations about up dependencies update and code execution

However, it might make sense to gather dependencies groups for specific folders / group of examples. We would have additional targets (like we have for [doc] or [tests]). @dcrawforAtAnsys What do you think ?

[Samuelopez-ansys]

@SMoraisAnsys @dcrawforAtAnsys I like last idea, to have groups of dependencies for group of examples

[Devin-Crawford]

@Samuelopez-ansys , @SMoraisAnsys : This makes sense if it is feasible.