Re-reading the environments article, it is not obvious that a system-wide Bonsai installation is now currently the best way for managing local bonsai environments. This may be because historically, in previous versions of Bonsai, having a system-wide Bonsai installation at the same time as local bonsai environments was potentially confusing. People might accidentally launch the system-wide Bonsai installation by double-clicking on the local environment workflow file or launch the system-wide Bonsai from the startup menu to open local environment workflows. Thus some users of Bonsai local environments actively discouraged installing Bonsai system-wide.
Bonsai 2.9.0 flips this script in two ways:
- Double clicking a workflow in a folder with a
.bonsai local environment launches the local Bonsai bootstrapper. This removes the step of telling people to launch the local Bonsai bootstrapper to open workflow files, and simplifies the process of using environments. However this requires a system wide Bonsai installation.
- Installing Bonsai system-wide and adding Bonsai to
PATH enables the use of the Bonsai command line interface to initialize and restore Bonsai environments.
Thus, we might want to emphasize the importance of still installing Bonsai system-wide. Having a note at the end of the introduction could be enough, but it might also be worth expanding on some of these advantages in some of the other sections.
Re-reading the environments article, it is not obvious that a system-wide Bonsai installation is now currently the best way for managing local bonsai environments. This may be because historically, in previous versions of Bonsai, having a system-wide Bonsai installation at the same time as local bonsai environments was potentially confusing. People might accidentally launch the system-wide Bonsai installation by double-clicking on the local environment workflow file or launch the system-wide Bonsai from the startup menu to open local environment workflows. Thus some users of Bonsai local environments actively discouraged installing Bonsai system-wide.
Bonsai 2.9.0 flips this script in two ways:
.bonsailocal environment launches the local Bonsai bootstrapper. This removes the step of telling people to launch the local Bonsai bootstrapper to open workflow files, and simplifies the process of using environments. However this requires a system wide Bonsai installation.PATHenables the use of the Bonsai command line interface to initialize and restore Bonsai environments.Thus, we might want to emphasize the importance of still installing Bonsai system-wide. Having a note at the end of the introduction could be enough, but it might also be worth expanding on some of these advantages in some of the other sections.