Some tests require not yet release version of payu

[anton-seaice]

As noted , there are tests in this repo which rely on the access-esm1.6 driver in payu, however this was added to payu after the latest release.

Therefore if a user does pip install from the model-config-tests repo, the access-esm1.6 test won't run unless the user manually updates the payu version from master branch in https://github.com/payu-org/payu

When run through the CI, model-config-tests use installed payu on NCI. So this is mostly an issue for user installs.

We could

• do a payu release and update the dependency version
• change the dependency to pull from github ?
• note this in the docs?
• other?

[jo-basevi]

I have still been using payu modules when installing model-config-tests from the repository as its the same setup as the CI and it also reduces the file inodes of the installed virtual environments as it re-uses dependencies (e.g. running through how to run pytests manually on NCI but using payu/dev as the module). So I would still recommend this method though we could add some additional instructions to docs for when wanting to install own version of payu from github.

Changing the dependency to pull from github might create issues with the CI environments re-installing payu and not using the configured module version.

I think with payu being developed alongside configurations, even if we push a new version, there would be a similar issue in future with features only in the development payu. That said, it might be time to push a new payu version as looks like last update was in January.

[anton-seaice]

I thought of a possible complimentary change - which is to specific the "payu minimum version" field in the test configs.

I think updating the README is probably the most realistic approach