Remove deprecated PLATON wrapper

[egpbos]

Problem description

Installing PLATON using the script fails with an error caused by removal in setuptools of the pkg_resources module.

Expected behavior

The failing call is to a script that should run an example in order to trigger downloading the 10GB of data files.

Evidence

Running the script produces the following output (at the end):

[...]
Successfully installed configparser-7.2.0 corner-2.2.3 dynesty-3.0.0 emcee-3.1.6 future-1.0.0 nose-1.3.7 platon-6.3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/pbos/projects/interra/PROTEUS/platon//examples/transit_depth_example.py", line 4, in <module>
    from platon.transit_depth_calculator import TransitDepthCalculator
  File "/Users/pbos/projects/interra/PROTEUS/platon/platon/transit_depth_calculator.py", line 1, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import resource_filename
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'
Done!!

My computer

MacOS Tahoe 26.3 (Intel), Python 3.12.

Additional notes

The issue is fixed upstream: ideasrule/platon@93e127c. Ideally, we'd merge that into the nichollsh fork. However, I see that some modifications have been made there and the fork is actually 10 commits behind upstream, so I don't know if this would be too much work.

A temporary workaround could be to pin setuptools: https://stackoverflow.com/a/79888812

Relevant people

@nichollsh

[nichollsh]

Thanks for testing this, Patrick. I wonder if it would be more straightforward to deprecate use of PLATON. I don't know if anyone is using it and we could prefer petitRADTRANS instead. @timlichtenberg @lorlo9999 ?

[timlichtenberg]

I am happy to remove it; pRT seems fine. but what about https://taurex.space? @stuitje @lorlo9999 :>

[timlichtenberg]

https://taurex3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/taurex/models.html

Here is the opportunity @HannoSpreeuw @QuentChangeat ;D

[stuitje]

I am happy to remove it; pRT seems fine. but what about https://taurex.space? @stuitje @lorlo9999 :>

Taurex looks cool!

[lorlo9999]

Using TauREx on PROTEUS' output is straightforward to implement. Taurex itself is also really easy to install and to work with in general!

[nichollsh]

• Remove from documentation
• Remove from code?
• Mark as un-maintained and throw error when called?

[nichollsh]

Following our conversations at one of the previous PROTEUS meetings, it seems like the best way to approach this is to eliminate the 'tech debt' of supporting PLATON. We could remove the wrapper for PLATON in the short term. Long term, we would instead introduce support for taurex or pRT to perform synthetic observations.