ambertools >=20 missing in conda-forge openmmforcefields install

[AharoniLab]

Hello,

I repeatedly encounter the following dependency issue when trying to install conda-forge openmmforcefields on Windows platform:

Could not solve for environment specs
The following packages are incompatible
└─ openmmforcefields =* * is not installable because there are no viable options
├─ openmmforcefields [0.10.0|0.11.0|...|0.9.0] would require
│ └─ ambertools >=20.0,<23 *, which does not exist (perhaps a missing channel);
├─ openmmforcefields [0.13.0|0.14.0|0.14.1] would require
│ └─ ambertools >=22,<24 *, which does not exist (perhaps a missing channel);
└─ openmmforcefields [0.14.1|0.14.2|0.15.0] would require
└─ ambertools >=22,<25 *, which does not exist (perhaps a missing channel).

• which surprised me because I expected ambertools to already be installed with the conda-forge openmm.

However, ambertools is not available as direct conda install for the Windows platform (even if on the Amber website it's claimed to be):

https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/ambertools

Can you help me resolve this loop?

Thanks!

[mattwthompson]

OpenMM implements some Amber force fields and file compatibility, but does not depend on Amber software directly. So it not already being installed with only vanilla OpenMM is the expectation.

AmberTools doesn't have conda packages for Windows. You can ask for them at their issue tracker but I wouldn't expect it to happen anytime soon. You'll have to use Unix or another installation pathway for that.

[ijpulidos]

I guess as a workaround to make this work on a windows machine, you could try looking at creating your environment using WSL https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install . My two cents.