PLATON installation fails, update needed

[egpbos]

Problem description

Installing PLATON using the script fails with an error caused by removal in setuptools of the pkg_resources module.

Expected behavior

The failing call is to a script that should run an example in order to trigger downloading the 10GB of data files.

Evidence

Running the script produces the following output (at the end):

[...]
Successfully installed configparser-7.2.0 corner-2.2.3 dynesty-3.0.0 emcee-3.1.6 future-1.0.0 nose-1.3.7 platon-6.3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/pbos/projects/interra/PROTEUS/platon//examples/transit_depth_example.py", line 4, in <module>
    from platon.transit_depth_calculator import TransitDepthCalculator
  File "/Users/pbos/projects/interra/PROTEUS/platon/platon/transit_depth_calculator.py", line 1, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import resource_filename
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'
Done!!

My computer

MacOS Tahoe 26.3 (Intel), Python 3.12.

Additional notes

The issue is fixed upstream: ideasrule/platon@93e127c. Ideally, we'd merge that into the nichollsh fork. However, I see that some modifications have been made there and the fork is actually 10 commits behind upstream, so I don't know if this would be too much work.

A temporary workaround could be to pin setuptools: https://stackoverflow.com/a/79888812

Relevant people

@nichollsh

[nichollsh]

Thanks for testing this, Patrick. I wonder if it would be more straightforward to deprecate use of PLATON. I don't know if anyone is using it and we could prefer petitRADTRANS instead. @timlichtenberg @lorlo9999 ?

[timlichtenberg]

I am happy to remove it; pRT seems fine. but what about https://taurex.space? @stuitje @lorlo9999 :>

[timlichtenberg]

https://taurex3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/taurex/models.html

Here is the opportunity @HannoSpreeuw @QuentChangeat ;D

[stuitje]

I am happy to remove it; pRT seems fine. but what about https://taurex.space? @stuitje @lorlo9999 :>

Taurex looks cool!

[lorlo9999]

Using TauREx on PROTEUS' output is straightforward to implement. Taurex itself is also really easy to install and to work with in general!