Can't use Input Generators with Binary install?

When I download and install the binaries from OpenChemistry, it doesn’t display any input generators besides GAMESS in the Quantum tab.

On Windows, it installed to C:\Program Files\Avogadro2 and this contains a bin and share folder. The bin folder contains the Avogadro2 executable and a number of .dll files. The share folder just contains a doc folder. I haven’t been able to find the inputGenerators in any of these folders. I have also looked to see if there was a particular folder where I could add the files manually, but I can’t seem to find one that Avogadro will read.

On Mac, I found the input generators at /Applications/Avogadro2.app/Contents/lib/avogadro2/scripts/inputGenerators, yet the program can’t seem to find them. I tried to copy them to /usr/local/lib/avogadro2/scripts/inputGenerators, but it still couldn’t find them there.

Environment Information

Avogadro version: 1.91.0 (Avogadro2)
Operating system and version: Mac OS 10.15.6 & Windows 10.0.19041

Thanks for the heads-up about the 1.91 builds - we clearly need to make a new release ASAP.

I don’t know about Windows. I’d give you a build from GitHub, but the Windows compile seems broken at the moment. I’ll revise this when I get that working again.

On the Mac, the input generators live in different places. Apple actively discourages developers from using /usr/local. I’d suggest creating a symlink from wherever you have them to ${HOME}/Library/Application Support/OpenChemistry/Avogadro/inputGenerators

I will try to find an hour or so to code up the “please install this plugin” feature today or tomorrow - I appreciate the concern.

For the Mac, should that directory exist already with the binary install of Avogadro2? I checked Library/Application Support for both the system and my user account and neither had an OpenChemistry folder. Manually creating the folders and placing the various .py files there didn’t seem to help Avogadro2 to find them.

No, there won’t be an OpenChemistry or an Avogadro directory unless they’re created. Since there are a variety of plugin types, you need something like this:

  • Library
    • Application Support
      • Open Chemistry
        • Avogadro
          • inputGenerators
            • dalton.py
            • orca.py
            • … (etc.)
          • commands

etc.

The code version would do this for you - create the directories and move thing in place.

Hope that helps.