Configuration routines for third party packages (enable_*(), disable_*(), *_enabled()) do not work

[sfalmo]

By default, wrf-python checks if a useful third party package such as xarray, cartopy, basemap or PyNGL is installed and uses it in this case. Additionally, there are some configuration routines (https://wrf-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user_api/index.html#configuration-routines) for enabling or disabling those third party packages regardless of the default behavior.

These configuration routines do not work. For example,

import wrf

wrf.disable_xarray()
print(wrf.xarray_enabled())

prints True if xarray is installed and subsequent calls to wrf.getvar still return xarrays.

[michaelavs]

Hi @sfalmo,
Thank you for opening this issue and a corresponding PR! I will be reviewing the PR in the next week to make sure everything runs smoothly before approval. Once approved, we can merge and release the fix for wrf-python.