Conda - Easier Installs and Simpler Builds

The BSD license conda is a package installer for Python and other languages. While it originates form the scientific Python community, it can be really useful for all Python programmers.

Installation of Python packages has become much simpler over the last years. The use of pip and virtualenv simplify the installation of Python packages a lot. However, they are specific to Python. The Python-agnostic conda has advantages for packages with C or Fortran extension that are very common for scientific libraries. conda is cross-platform. According to different statistics, the most Python users work on Windows. Often is especially complicate to get extensions with many dependencies installer on this platform. conda facilities the installation for Windows considerably.

This talk introduces the basic usage of conda to install packages. This includes the basic commands for searching and installing of packages. Furthermore, the talk demonstrates the creation of environments for different Python versions and combinations of packages.

The building of a packages is simple. The talk shows how to build recipes that contain declarations of dependencies .

conda can work together with pip. This allows to use all packages from the Python Package Index ( PyPI). The talk explains the concept of channels that allow to get packages from different sources.