RichDEM Installation Fails on Google Colab with Compilation Error

[CristinaMarsh]

Hello,

I hope this message finds you well. I've been working with several geospatial packages and attempting to include RichDEM in my workflow on Google Colab, but I'm encountering some difficulties during the installation process.

Environment
Platform: Google Colab
Python version: 3.11
Operating system: Ubuntu (Linux x86_64)
Installation method: pip install

Steps Taken
Attempted to install RichDEM through pip as part of a larger requirements installation
Tried the command pip install --only-binary=richdem richdem but received a message that no binary distributions were found

Error Details
During installation, I'm receiving a compilation error:

Building wheel for richdem (setup.py) ... error
ERROR: Failed building wheel for richdem
error: command '/usr/bin/x86_64-linux-gnu-g++' failed with exit code 1
error: subprocess-exited-with-error
× python setup.py bdist_wheel did not run successfully.
│ exit code: 1
╰─> See above for output.

I also noticed a setuptools warning about dash-separated options:

SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: Invalid dash-separated options
!! Usage of dash-separated 'description-file' will not be supported in future versions.
Please use the underscore name 'description_file' instead.

Questions
I would greatly appreciate any guidance on:

1. Are there specific dependencies I should install before attempting to build RichDEM?
2. Is there a recommended installation method for Google Colab environments?
3. Could the setuptools warning be related to the installation failure?

Thank you very much for your time and for maintaining this useful package. I'd be happy to provide any additional information that might help resolve this issue.

[jhill1]

I've just hit the same issue with pip install. Installing from source, it appears to be related to issue #81 . Commenting out the line pointed at by the error (src/pywrapper.cpp) allows compilation to succeed. Not a helpful fix for your use-case though, I'm afraid!

$ git diff pywrapper.cpp
diff --git a/wrappers/pyrichdem/src/pywrapper.cpp b/wrappers/pyrichdem/src/pywrapper.cpp
index 8fdb3bc..7a38e3b 100644
--- a/wrappers/pyrichdem/src/pywrapper.cpp
+++ b/wrappers/pyrichdem/src/pywrapper.cpp
@@ -138,7 +138,7 @@ PYBIND11_MODULE(_richdem, m) {
         }
       );
 
-  m.def("generate_perlin_terrain", &richdem::generate_perlin_terrain, "Generate random terrain using perlin noise", py::arg("array"), py::arg("seed"));
+//m.def("generate_perlin_terrain", &richdem::generate_perlin_terrain, "Generate random terrain using perlin noise", py::arg("array"), py::arg("seed"));
 
   py::module_ dephier_module = m.def_submodule("depression_hierarchy", "Depression Hierarchies");

[jessjaco]

I think this issue is that there are two signatures for generate_perlin_terrain and pybind11 doesn't know which one to use. The second was added in this commit: c8fd849

richdem/include/richdem/terrain_generation.hpp

Lines 5 to 10 in c8fd849

	namespace richdem {
	void generate_perlin_terrain(Array2D<double>& arr, const uint32_t seed);
	Array2D<double> generate_perlin_terrain(const uint32_t size, const uint32_t seed);
	}

I added a PR for a possible solution which compiles.

[junjielyu13]

thanks you PR is working to me