Contributing guide - uninstalling mne to switch to dev version prone to errors

Contributing guide advises to install mne via conda:

curl --remote-name https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mne-tools/mne-python/main/environment.yml
conda env create --file environment.yml --name mnedev

but then, when saying how to switch the python to the dev version, it suggests to uninstall mne via pip:

pip uninstall -y mne

which gave me an error:

(mnedev) C:\src>pip uninstall -y mne
Found existing installation: mne 0.24.1
Uninstalling mne-0.24.1:
  Successfully uninstalled mne-0.24.1
ERROR: Exception:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\base_command.py", line 167, in exc_logging_wrapper
    status = run_func(*args)
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\commands\uninstall.py", line 102, in run
    uninstall_pathset.commit()
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\req\req_uninstall.py", line 420, in commit
    self._moved_paths.commit()
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\req\req_uninstall.py", line 273, in commit
    save_dir.cleanup()
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\utils\temp_dir.py", line 173, in cleanup
    rmtree(self._path)
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\tenacity\__init__.py", line 326, in wrapped_f
    return self(f, *args, **kw)
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\tenacity\__init__.py", line 406, in __call__
    do = self.iter(retry_state=retry_state)
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\tenacity\__init__.py", line 362, in iter
    raise retry_exc.reraise()
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\tenacity\__init__.py", line 195, in reraise
    raise self.last_attempt.result()
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\concurrent\futures\_base.py", line 439, in result
    return self.__get_result()
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\concurrent\futures\_base.py", line 391, in __get_result
    raise self._exception
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\tenacity\__init__.py", line 409, in __call__
    result = fn(*args, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\utils\misc.py", line 124, in rmtree
    shutil.rmtree(dir, ignore_errors=ignore_errors, onerror=rmtree_errorhandler)
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\shutil.py", line 749, in rmtree
    return _rmtree_unsafe(path, onerror)
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\shutil.py", line 627, in _rmtree_unsafe
    onerror(os.unlink, fullname, sys.exc_info())
  File "C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev\lib\shutil.py", line 625, in _rmtree_unsafe
    os.unlink(fullname)
PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: 'C:\\Users\\mmagn\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\pip-uninstall-67iq3cg9\\mne.exe

The permission errors is weird because I run the console as Administrator. After that I still get mne listed as available, and it seems to have been installed from conda-forge, not pip:

(mnedev) C:\src>conda list mne
# packages in environment at C:\Users\mmagn\Continuum\anaconda3\envs\mnedev:
#
# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
mne                       0.24.1               hd8ed1ab_1    conda-forge
mne-qt-browser            0.1.7              pyhd8ed1ab_0    conda-forge

[larsoner]

The permission error is expected, pip respects the permissions that conda sets and they are strict, so you (often? usually?) have to use conda to remove things that conda installs

If you install mne with conda but want to upgrade, the easiest thing to do is to remove it with conda uninstall --force mne, the --force will make it ignore the deps that will be angry about it (like mne-qt-gui), then you can pip install https://github.com/mne-tools/mne-python/zipball/main for example and things should be fine

[mmagnuski]

@larsoner If the error is expected then Contributing Guide instructions should be modified, I followed them step by step. 😃