Issues with HDF and M1

[violafanfani]

@katehoffshutta reported this issue:

When attempting to build netZooPy with local changes by running pip install -e . from the root directory of the repository, I get the following error:

      .. ERROR:: Could not find a local HDF5 installation.
         You may need to explicitly state where your local HDF5 headers and
         library can be found by setting the ``HDF5_DIR`` environment
         variable or by using the ``--hdf5`` command-line option.
The error persists after reinstalling hdf5 with homebrew and setting the HDF5_DIR environment variable as the error message suggested. This is happening on a Mac with M1 chip running Monterey 12.6.3.

This seems to be an M1 chip issue that has a couple of workarounds.

1. Official workaround: see here for a workaround and here for the official documentation.
2. Conda: installing pytables in conda seems to be enough to avoid this issue:

conda create -n myenv python>3.7
conda install -c conda-forge pytables
pip install -e .

I will post here if anything changes and the issue is no longer present. In the meantime you are more than welcome to post alternatives that have worked for you.