Merge branch 'main' into beta-opt2-refactor

Author: bnlawrence

README.md

@@ -20,10 +20,18 @@ xconv2 provides (or will provide) a graphical interface to local and remote weat
 We intend to release this as a standalone executable for linux and macos, but for the moment you should use a Python 3.12 (or later) environment with
 udunits2 and cartopy installed (from conda-forge), then you can pip install from the source using one of these:
 
-`pip install "git+https://github.com/ncas-cms/xconv2.git"`
-`pip install "git+ssh://github.com/ncas-cms/xconv2.git"`
+#### Alpha
 
-and then you should have `xconv2` available on your command line.
+We intend to release this as a standalone application (an "app") eventually, but meanwhile, you will likely need a dedicated (or up-to-date) mamba environment with a Python 3.12 (or later) environment with `cartopy` and `udunits2` installed, then you can pip install from PyPI. Here's an example:
+
+```
+conda create -n xconv2
+conda activate xconv2
+mamba install -c conda-forge pip cartopy udunits2
+pip install xconv2
+```
+
+and then you should have `xconv2` available on your command line in that environment.  You could of course pip install into your own environment, but you will need to ensure it has cartopy and udunits2 in it (both via conda or mamba).
 
 ### Conda Environments