Installing the NEST simulator for use with Anaconda

Installing the NEST simulator for use with Anaconda was pretty painless. However, it took me two failed tries to realize just how painless, so I thought I'd post how I got it working.

Note I am in Ubuntu 16/Python 3.7/Conda 4.5.11. If you are on Windows, don't even bother. Just install Linux. 

Edit:
Note since I posted this, someone has created an installer that should make installation really easy. I have not tried it, so cannot vouch for it, but I recommend that before you follow my recipe, see the first comment below and give it a shot.

1. Create/activate your nest environment

conda create --name nest
conda activate nest

2. Install system packages you will need
Note this is for the 'standard' configuration as described at http://www.nest-simulator.org/installation/.
  sudo apt-get install -y build-essential cmake \
  libltdl7-dev libreadline6-dev libncurses5-dev \
  libgsl0-dev openmpi-bin libopenmpi-dev

3. Install python packages
conda install numpy scipy matplotlib ipython nose cython scikit-learn

4. Install NEST proper (see http://www.nest-simulator.org/installation/)
Obviously you can use whatever directory structure you want, but I put my
build in /opt/nest, so change your values below accordingly if you want something else.

a. Create folder /opt/nest and give yourself ownership if needed (I had to use sudo chown)

b. Download NEST (I put the tarball in /opt/nest)

c. Unpack the tarball (in /opt/nest):
    tar -xzvf nest-simulator-2.16.0.tar.gz

d. Create a build directory (again, within opt/nest/):
    mkdir nest-simulator-2.16.0-build

e cd to the build directory:
    cd nest-simulator-2.16.0-build

f. Run cmake to build makefiles
Note the -Dwith-python=3 option, which forces it to use Python 3.
    cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/opt/nest/ /opt/nest/nest-simulator-2.16.0 -Dwith-python=3
I got some warnings ('Cannot generate a safe linker search path for target sli_readline ') but things seemed to work out ok.

g. Set environment variables
Add the following line to .bashrc:
source /opt/nest/bin/nest_vars.sh

5. Run the makefiles
make  #this will take a few minutes(you may get some warnings)
make install #this goes quickly
make installcheck #takes a few miniutes, gives summary at end

6. Test something out
From your favorite IDE or command line, run a simple script (e.g., one_neuron.py in pynest/examples).
Things should just work. I like to use Spyder with conda, so added the following:
    conda install spyder
    spyder  #so spyder runs from the nest environment
The one_neuron.py example worked just fine. Note, though, if you are using spyder, you will not want to run your code using F5 unless you are a fan of restarting your Python kernel constantly. To avoid problems, I recommend entering run filename.py in Spyder's (ipython) command line when ready to run a script.

7. Have fun!
Enjoy NEST, it is a really amazing neural simulation framework. I recommend starting here to learn how to program in pynest, the Python interface for the NEST simulator: http://www.nest-simulator.org/introduction-to-pynest/