depletion scripts can find openmc._utils

[shimwell]

Recently we moved utils into the openmc/data repository from it's rpevious home which was openmc._utils

Two of the depletion scripts try to import utils from this old location
generate_endf71_chain_casl.py
generate_endf71_chain.py

One option for fixing this is to import utils from the parent directory as demonstrated here

https://gist.github.com/JungeAlexander/6ce0a5213f3af56d7369

We could change this one line

from openmc._utils import download

to this

current_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(inspect.getfile(inspect.currentframe())))
parent_dir = os.path.dirname(current_dir)
sys.path.insert(0, parent_dir)
from utils import download

Which isn't very nice but it works.

Or perhaps this is a good time to thing about making a package

Does anyone have any preference or other solutions?

[drewejohnson]

Good catch!

We could make a file link with ln utils.py depletion/, that way changes to one would be contained in the other. I'm not sure how portable these are to windows though...

Alternatively, we can use pathlib.Path(__file__).resolve().parents[1] which finds the absolute path for the file (one of the generators), and then backs out one directory. This directory could be inserted into sys.path

I guess it also depends on where these file should be run by the end user. If I clone the repository, and then move one of the generator scripts, then the utils file will not be in the parent directory

🤔

[shimwell]

I guess another option is to move the depletion scripts to the base folder. Are all the xml files and json files needed?

[drewejohnson]

There might be a case that the XML files are not necessary, as they can be downloaded from https://openmc.org/depletion-chains/. But, cloning this repository does make it easier to track any issues and changes that might arise in the chains. The CASL chain has been particularly interesting.

I believe the JSON files should remain, because these are useful for augmenting the depletion chains to account for non-local energy deposition in the base energy deposition model. These can be generated by generate_serpent_fissq.py based on ENDF data. But keeping these files is nice for the same reason the XML files are stored, namely one can watch their changes over time

[shimwell]

Thanks for fixing this @paulromano and @drewejohnson