🛠️ Megspikes Installation Fix (macOS + Python 3.7)

[xenificity]

🛠️ megspikes Installation Fix (macOS + Python 3.7)

Problem

pip install megspikes fails with this error on macOS when using the recommended Python 3.7 conda environment:

OSError: [Errno 66] Directory not empty: .../Cython-3.0.12-....egg/...dist-info → .../EGG-INFO
FileExistsError during setup.py clean

Root cause: setup.py adds 'Cython' to setup_requires. This pulls Cython ≥ 3.0, which has a known macOS + legacy setuptools bug when building eggs in temporary directories.

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✅ Working Solution

Run these two commands in your (megspikes) environment:

pip install "cython>=0.29,<3.0" numpy==1.21.0
pip install megspikes --no-cache-dir

This pre-installs a compatible older Cython version and avoids the conflicting build step.

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Alternative: Fresh Environment (Recommended)

conda deactivate
conda env remove -n megspikes

conda create -n megspikes python=3.7 pip
conda activate megspikes

pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
pip install "cython>=0.29,<3.0"
pip install megspikes --no-cache-dir

Notes

• The package pins very old dependencies (numpy 1.21, mne 0.23, etc.). This is expected for reproducibility.
• Python 3.7 is EOL — consider updating workflows if possible in the future.
• After installation, verify with:

  python -c "import megspikes; print(megspikes.__version__)"