As a starting doctoral student in the field of computational neurosciences, I am particularly interested in using NEST in my research works. However, I am a bit confused about the procedure to install NEST on a M1 macbook pro, therefore, I prefer to ask you before doing anything. From what I understood from your website here are the steps that, I suppose, I should do to install NEST properly:

- as I use a M1MAX Mac (MacOS 12.0) , I can't just install nest, I have to build it. To do so:

- Download Miniforge for arm64 (from which I will be able to use Conda right?)

- Install Python 3.9.4 for arm Mac macOS 64-bit universal2 installer

- Download the nest source code directly from github (https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator)

- Create a conda environment using the following command conda env create -f extras/conda-nest-simulator-dev.yml

- Activate this environment (  conda activate...)

- Create a build directory outside the NEST source and go into it

- Install cmake package using conda ( conda install -c anaconda cmake)

- Configure NEST by running: cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=<nest_install_dir> <nest_source_dir>

- Once done I can run make. make install. make installcheck

Here are my questions:

- Is this installation procedure correct?

- Once installed, how can I launch NEST from a python interpreter such as Spyder? Or is it only possible to launch it within a terminal window?

- I am quite new to managing packages, so correct me if I am wrong, but have I to install everything using exclusively Conda ?

- What is the purpose of creating a new environment to build NEST

-Is there anything I missed or misunderstood?

I realize how many questions I ask you, and I am very grateful for every advice you could give me.

If it is more convenient for you, we can have a phone call when you want.