[NEST Users] Installation procedure of NEST on M1 mac

Dear Madam, Dear Sir As a starting doctoral student in the field of computational neurosciences, I am particularly interested in using NEST in my research works. However, I am a bit confused about the procedure to install NEST on a M1 macbook pro, therefore, I prefer to ask you before doing anything. From what I understood from your website here are the steps that, I suppose, I should do to install NEST properly: - as I use a M1MAX Mac (MacOS 12.0) , I can't just install nest, I have to build it. To do so: - Download Miniforge for arm64 (from which I will be able to use Conda right?) - Install Python 3.9.4 for arm Mac macOS 64-bit universal2 installer <https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.9.8/python-3.9.8-macos11.pkg> - Download the nest source code directly from github ( https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator) - Create a conda environment using the following command conda env create -f extras/conda-nest-simulator-dev.yml - Activate this environment ( conda activate...) - Create a build directory outside the NEST source and go into it - Install cmake package using conda ( conda install -c anaconda cmake) - Configure NEST by running: cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=<nest_install_dir> <nest_source_dir> - Once done I can run make. make install. make installcheck Here are my questions: - Is this installation procedure correct? - Once installed, how can I launch NEST from a python interpreter such as Spyder? Or is it only possible to launch it within a terminal window? - I am quite new to managing packages, so correct me if I am wrong, but have I to install everything using exclusively Conda ? - What is the purpose of creating a new environment to build NEST -Is there anything I missed or misunderstood? I realize how many questions I ask you, and I am very grateful for every advice you could give me. If it is more convenient for you, we can have a phone call when you want. -- *Julien BALLBÉ Y SABATÉ* *Étudiant en thèse - PhD student* *Neurophysiology of Visual Computation* Centre Giovanni Borelli - CNRS UMR 9010 Université de Paris 45 rue des Saint-Pères, 75006 Paris, France Tel: +33 6 79 03 40 35