add conda-forge install

[alexvoss]

I added installation instructions for the Zensical package on conda-forge, with appropriate disclaimers.

I have added mention of Mamba to the text as this is the leaner, meaner, BSD-licensed alternative to Anaconda. As far as I can tell, the instructions for installing Zensical do not need to change if Mamba is installed through the recommended Miniforge distribution. Those who prefer a faster install can swap to installing with the mamba command but conda will also work. I stopped short of explaining the difference to keep things simple.

Tested with Miniforge on both Linux and Windows. Don't have a MacOS VM to test this at the moment.

[beatrix-chan]

According to the example from Anaconda's documentation on creating an environment, conda create -n zensical python=3.14 will work perfectly fine too. I used to have a macOS VM before and I remember running into an error with python=3.14.* but it ran fine with python=3.14. As a continuous user of Miniconda, conda create -n zensical python=3.14 works on Linux and Windows too.

Also, since the commands are all the same across all OS, maybe it's easier to just make one code block instead of content tabs of code blocks (like uv)

[alexvoss]

Thanks. I decided to keep the distinction between operating systems - because Windows. At least the Microforge distribution does not modify the PATH by default. So, without using the "Mamba Prompt", people might not have the command on their PATH.

Re the asterisks, they do seem to be superfluous, so I will remove them.

[beatrix-chan]

My apologies, I am so used to having Anaconda in PATH I forgot about it being not there by default. Thank you for the explanation.

[beatrix-chan]

About that admonition about contacting the maintainer if the package don't work, I just checked on Anaconda.org and for homepage, repository, and documentation, they are all redirected to Zensical's official website and repository (that's also why I didn't know that was a community package).

I think it's better to either move the admonition up to under the "Third-party distribution" section instead of under the "Install with conda" subsection, or switch it to a disclaimer that the package on conda-forge is not officially published by the creators of Zensical.

[alexvoss]

About that admonition about contacting the maintainer if the package don't work, I just checked on Anaconda.org and for homepage, repository, and documentation, they are all redirected to Zensical's official website and repository (that's also why I didn't know that was a community package).

They are pointing back to us, yes. That is fine as long as there is a way to raise an issue if there is a problem with this particular package in the repository. The place to raise an issue in that case would be https://github.com/conda-forge/zensical-feedstock/issues and I do wonder if we should link there.

I think it's better to either move the admonition up to under the "Third-party distribution" section instead of under the "Install with conda" subsection, or switch it to a disclaimer that the package on conda-forge is not officially published by the creators of Zensical.

So, my idea was to keep the warning close to the instructions. Many people look only for those and don't read the intro. I am guilty of that, too. Also, if we add any more channels in the future (apt install, homebrew), we may want to repeat the warning for the same reason. In effect, the warning is repeated in the introductory bit. IMHO that is good repetition.

We will need to see how things go once we publish this. On the "publish your site" page we have taken the approach to link to community guides instead of incorporating content into our own docs, which puts us under an obligation to maintain the docs even as we do not maintain the distribution. I can see ways in which both approaches can backfire, so we will try to learn and adapt.

[beatrix-chan]

Maybe something like this for now:

!!! warning
    We cannot provide support for distributions we do not control. If you
    experience any issues, please contact the maintainers of the packages within
    these distributions:

    - [`conda-forge`](https://github.com/conda-forge/zensical-feedstock/issues)

Just in a way to make finding the "maintainers" easier. 🤔🤔

[alexvoss]

Thanks for your help @beatrix-chan! I made a couple of last tweaks before merging:

• pointing to the zensical-feedstock repository instead of direct at issues
• removing syntax highlighting as this just does not work well for shell commands

[beatrix-chan]

Everything looks great! Thank you for letting me be part of this and thank you for your work too! 😊