2023-07-19 Conda Community Meeting

Zoom link · What time is the meeting in my time zone

Various parts of the conda community gather on a regular basis. This meeting brings together all of these sub-communities for a community wide call.

Attendees

Name	Initials	Affiliation	GH Username
Bianca Henderson	BH	Anaconda	beeankha
Cheng H. Lee	CHL	Anaconda/cf	chenghlee
Leopold Talirz	LT	Microsoft	ltalirz
Jaime Rodríguez-Guerra	JRG	Quansight	jaimergp
Daniel Holth	DH	Anaconda	dholth
Marcel Bargull	MB	Bioconda/cf	mbargull
Travis Hathaway	TH	Anaconda	travishathaway
Wolf Vollprecht	WV	prefix.dev	wolfv
Katherine Kinnaman	KK	Anaconda	kathatherine
Dave Clements	DPC	Anaconda	tnabtaf
Katherine Abrikian	KCA	Anaconda	kalawac
Carl Anderson	CPA	Anaconda	barabo
Nicholas Tucker	NT	Anaconda	ntucker-anaconda
John Kirkham	JK	NVIDIA/cf	jakirkham
14 people in total

Introductions

• Leo, at SciPy, comp material science. Running atomic simulations on Azure. Microarchitectures

Announcements

• (JRG) Open CEP Votes:
  • menuinst v2: https://github.com/conda-incubator/ceps/pull/8
  • run_exports.json: https://github.com/conda-incubator/ceps/pull/51
• (BH) July releases for conda and conda-build are underway!
  • (JRG) conda-libmamba-solver also joining the release party.

New Agenda Items

• (JK) Anaconda.org metadata updates

  • license_url not showing up for packages ( https://github.com/conda/infrastructure/discussions/739 )
  • Revisit recipe_url idea ( https://github.com/conda/conda-build/pull/2489 )
    • (JRG) Another way available with conda-build 3.26: https://github.com/conda-forge/conda-smithy/pull/1577
  • More options to sort and filter packages (e.g., subdir, build string, etc.)
  • The anaconda copy command with the --replace flag replaces both the metadata and the destination package.
    • The docs indicate it should only replace the metadata in one spot (https://github.com/Anaconda-Platform/anaconda-client/blob/master/binstar_client/commands/copy.py#L67C5-L67C111) but the error message here (https://github.com/Anaconda-Platform/anaconda-client/blob/master/binstar_client/commands/copy.py#L42) indicates it should overwrite the package too.
    • We'd like an option to only replace the metadata on the package landing page.
  • Q: Where should we raise issues like this? (Used to be a catch-all GH repo, but that seems to have been removed.)
  • KK will discuss the above with Crystal S at Anaconda.

• (CHL) Should we create a citation for conda itself, a la conda-forge's Zenodo entry?

  • (DPC) Should we write a conda academic paper? That would be a lot more work.
    • There are also SciCrunch IDs.
  • (JRG) Are we talking about conda the tool, the packaging approach, or the ecosystem/community?
  • (DPC) Will create Zenodo citiation for conda tool itself. Encourage all ecosystem components to do this.
  • (LT) Zenodo would allow us to create a DOI for each conda version (via GH integration). Major plus.
    • There is a Zenodo Github integration to pick up on versioning.

• (CHL) Should we promote the CEPs and governance repos?

  • (JRG) We've been holding off because we did not have enough GH license seats
  • (MB) Let's hold off until the NumFOCUS transition is complete.
  • Consensus: agree in spirit, but wait until the NumFOCUS transition.

• (CHL,LT) Resurrecting archspec-enabled builds discussion

  • Came up at SciPy 2023 sprints. Probably too big to discuss here; please comment ("go nuts") in issue thread 😄
  • (JRG) figure out how to avoid build string explosion (MB) plugins? think about mamba as well!
  • (MB,CHL) we should keep features (mostly) dead. Probably not the route we want to take to implement this.
  • (JK) Archspec could be useful for CUDA. Though maybe it would be gpuspec or cudaspec? There is a case for ARM which NVIDIA also cares about. (CHL) Ideally, we'd generalize it beyond just x86 CPUs.
  • Let's revisit in two weeks to see how the GH thread has developed to figure out next steps.

• (JRG) VSCode is trying to figure out how to do Python package management: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/python/python-package-management-proposal/, and there's an issue for ideas: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/21627

  • JRG will follow this and take ownership
  • (LT) Sarah Kaiser is in close contact VS Code

• (TH) 🔌 Let's create a Fetch Plugin hook (collaboration welcome!):

  • Here's the Epic https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/11821
  • We'd like help on reviewing the technical specifications, actual implementation and coming up with ideas for plugins (we already have a few 😉)
  • Here's a link to the CEP we've already written: https://github.com/conda-incubator/ceps/pull/44

• (DPC): Comings and goings?

  • Rachel Asquith (Anaconda): taking over Jesse's role
  • Carl Anderson (Anaconda): looking at ways to improve (cache and CDN) performance of anaconda.org
  • Kathereine Abrikian (Anaconda): Internship ends next week! Looking for open positions after that.