Package Management#

Learning Objectives

This section describes the processes and tools that go into the following executable command using Conda:

conda install tudatpy  # -c tudat-team

Conda#

Conda is in open source package manager that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. It is popular in the Python community, as it was originally intended to handle Python programs primarily but due to its ability to package and distribute software for any language, its use has grown significantly.

Nomenclature

Environment: A directory that contains a specific collection of conda packages that you have installed.
Anaconda: A distribution of the Python and R programming languages for specific computing (data science, machine learning applications, large-scale data processing, predictive analytics, etc.) [3]
Bootstrap: A bootstrap is the program that initializes the operating system (OS) during startup (Only relevant for next nomenclature item).
Miniconda: Miniconda is a free minimal installer for conda. It is a small, bootstrap version of Anaconda that includes only conda, Python, the packages they depend on, and a small number of other useful packages, including pip, zlib and a few others. [4]
Recipe: A Conda-build recipe is a flat directory that contains a specific collection of files which defines a package’s dependencies, description (branding), build procedure (when applicable) and test procedure.
Pinning: Pinning dependencies refers to explicitly defining the versions of software that your application depends on. The high-level is to “freeze” dependencies so that subsequent builds/deployments are repeatable.

Conda-build#

Conda-build is a package that contains commands and tools to use conda to build your own conda packages. It also provides helpful tools to constrain or pin versions in recipes. At the heart of Conda-build is the concept of a Conda-build recipe:

recipe
├── bld.bat
├── build.sh
├── meta.yaml
└── run_test.py

Each file in the Conda-build recipe has a specific responsibility in creating a conda package. The responsibilities are as follow:

File	Description
`meta.yaml`	A file that contains all the metadata in the recipe. Only `package/name` and `package/version` are required.
`build.sh`	The script that installs the files for the package on macOS and Linux. It is executed using the `bash` command.
`bld.bat`	The build script that installs the files for the package on Windows. It is executed using `cmd`.
`run_test.[py,sh,bat]`	An optional Python test file, a test script that runs automatically if it is part of the recipe. Optional patches that are applied to the source.