Installation problems on Windows

Using the default command pip install mnelab on Windows I get:

Installing collected packages: PyQt5, mnelab
Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: 'C:\\Users\\mmagn\\Continuum\\anaconda3\\Lib\\site-packages\\PyQt5\\Qt.pyd'
Consider using the `--user` option or check the permissions.

strangely, I get it even when I run it in command prompt with administrator privileges. When I run using pip install mnelab --user the script the mnelab.exe is put in a separate directory and does not do anything. When I then first activate my base anaconda env (it is my default python so I don’t know why it makes any difference) and then do pip install mnelab - I get everything installed in one directory but mnelab.exe still does not work. When I try to import mnelab in python I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\mnelab\__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
    from .mainwindow import MainWindow
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\lib\site-packages\mnelab\mainwindow.py", line 7, in <module>
    from PyQt5.QtCore import (pyqtSlot, QStringListModel, QModelIndex, QSettings,
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PyQt5.sip'

I might have been unlucky - I can test tomorrow on other Windows computers.

[Teekuningas]

Often one might want to use defaults channel as the default and only install packages not present there from conda-forge, especially in the base environment, like:

conda install -c defaults -c conda-forge mnelab

Anyway python packaging is notably horrible, and almost always good idea to use environments.

[cbrnr]

Yes, let’s wait. Just to make it clear, pip install --no-deps mnelab would have worked in his case.