Remove need to install pytables from conda-forge

[niksirbi]

Description

What is this PR

• Bug fix
• Addition of a new feature
• Other

Why is this PR needed?

Since tables>3.10, Pytables had added wheels for ARM (silicon) Macs, see release notes.

If I recall correctly, this was the main reason we had to install pytables from conda-forge, see #125

If we can get the package directly from PyPI, and that works cross-OS, the installation and CI will be greatly simplified:

• we can do a 1-line install with pip or uv
• we can drop tox-conda

What does this PR do?

• Adds a dependency on tables>3.10.1 to pyptoject.toml
• Removes tox-conda from the tox config in pyptoject.toml
• Updates docs/requirements.txt
• Overhauls installation guide accordingly, and also includes uv as an option
• Updates contributing guide (creation of a dev environment).

This paves the way for eventually switching out CI to uv, but I'll open that as a separate issue, as it may necessitate changes to our actions.

References

#125

How has this PR been tested?

• Runnning tox locally on MacOS silicon passed.
• CI passes across all OSes.
• uv run --python 3.13 --isolated --with-editable '.[dev]' pytest passes (I had to do uv cache prune once).

Is this a breaking change?

If this PR breaks any existing functionality, please explain how and why.

Does this PR require an update to the documentation?

If any features have changed, or have been added. Please explain how the
documentation has been updated.

Checklist:

• The code has been tested locally
• Tests have been added to cover all new functionality
• The documentation has been updated to reflect any changes
• The code has been formatted with pre-commit

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 100.00%. Comparing base (f9d728e) to head (ecda952).

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff            @@
##              main      #683   +/-   ##
=========================================
  Coverage   100.00%   100.00%           
=========================================
  Files           34        34           
  Lines         1997      1997           
=========================================
  Hits          1997      1997           

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[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud