Models API

[wpbonelli]

Demo programmatic access to example data/models via https://github.com/fatiando/pooch.

This could be convenient for

• feature: self-contained notebooks, API for example models modflowpy/flopy#1872 (comment)
• Self-contained example notebooks modflow6#1348
• autotests in flopy, modflow6 and elsewhere

[wpbonelli]

A simple proof of concept is available here: https://github.com/wpbonelli/modflow-devtools/tree/models-api

If this seems worthwhile, flopy may be a better place for it because the API

• could return MFSimulation or model directly
• could construct models lazily from Python/flopy on first call then cache input files, as an alternative to downloading them from GitHub

[wpbonelli]

I think we can build a registry in release time CI, release it with the package, and then devtools can provide access to models in

• https://github.com/MODFLOW-ORG/modflow6-examples
• https://github.com/MODFLOW-ORG/modflow6-testmodels
• https://github.com/MODFLOW-ORG/modflow6-largetestmodels

..without moving the input files here. This would also work for flopy example data. Though at some point it is probably still worth considering defining all examples in flopy python code, at which point it probably makes more sense to move this there.

[wpbonelli]

This will deprecate the test models fixtures when we have it.

[wpbonelli]

An initial version of this is now on the develop branch, and in use in both mf6 and modflowapi tests. It is not yet released.

This package now provides several ways to access example models, from both the local file system and from GitHub, at a few different levels of control/abstraction.

• At the lowest level, there are modflow_devtools.misc.get_model_paths() and get_namefile_paths() which recursively search the filesystem.

• Convenient for developers, models on the local filesystem can be accessed by either checking them out next to the repository under test or setting REPOS_PATH as needed, then using the fixtures from test functions.

• Convenient for both developers and users, an "official" registry of models can now be accessed through the modflow_devtools.models module.

One question is whether the last two use cases can be merged somehow, i.e. how to give the models API the ability to access local models. It is often necessary to modify a local model during development, and it is inconvenient to have to switch between the models API and the fixtures for this.