colab notebook url install failing

[atravitz]

condacolab's install_from_url() currently requires that the python version match their default version. This will make our install flaky, so I suggest we install using mamba instead so that we're more flexible on which python version we install with.

[atravitz]

looks like the python versioning requirement fix will be in the next release: conda-incubator/condacolab#66

but I think we should use mamba unless there's another reason we're using install_from_url
(@IAlibay @mikemhenry)

[mikemhenry]

Using install_from_url has the advantage of once we test the notebook, we know it will work (except when google colab infra changes) but a new version of nglview could break things for example -- or really any other dep change.

[mikemhenry]

Since the notebook is linked on our try.openfree.energy IMHO it is important that it works and I think updating deps breaks it more often than goolge breaking it, but I do not have hard data to back up that claim

[atravitz]

Since the notebook is linked on our try.openfree.energy IMHO it is important that it works and I think updating deps breaks it more often than goolge breaking it, but I do not have hard data to back up that claim

That's fair - then the solution is making a single file installer with python 3.11 (or bumping all our single-file installers to 3.11 - unless there's a reason for staying at 3.10 for now?)