Installation

PowNet is a Python package available on PyPI. It is designed to be compatible with Python 3.12 and above. Depending on your needs, you can choose between two installation options: a regular user or a power user. The following sections will guide you through the installation process for both options.

The following step is highly recommended for any user: creating a virtual environment to manage dependencies. If using Conda, we can create an envrionment with the following command

conda create --name your_env_name_here
conda activate your_env_name_here

If deciding on a name for the environment takes too long, please feel free to name the environment as “pownet”.

Option 1: Regular user

A regular user is someone who has created their input files and wish to just run PowNet. In this case, it is best to simply install PowNet as a package from PyPI. We can achieve this with the following command:

pip install pownet

Option 2: Power user (no pun intended)

In case we wish to modify the source code, PowNet should be installed as an editable package. First, download or clone the PowNet repository to your local machine. For example: if we want to clone to “C://user/pownet”,

git clone https://github.com/your-username/pownet.git C://user/pownet

Next, open a terminal and navigate to the directory where we cloned the repository:

cd C://user/pownet

Now, we can install this PowNet package using pip, which is a manager for Python packages:

pip install -e .

This command installs the package in “editable” mode (-e) using pyproject.toml that is located in the root directory of PowNet. The editable mode allows us to edit PowNet codebase when we need to modify or implement new features. The pyproject.toml file specifies the dependencies required to run PowNet.