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November 2023 Releases

· 6 min read
Ken Odegard

The November 2023 releases included updates to three conda community projects: conda, conda-build, and conda-libmamba-solver! 🎉 Each of these have been released to both main and conda-forge.

Changes in Conda 23.11.0​

To update conda, run:

conda install -n base conda=23.11.0

📢 Special Announcement 📢​

New menuinst v2 support!

conda has supported Start menu items on Windows for a long time. This is what allows users to open up their Miniconda prompt on CMD (Command Prompt) with an initialized conda session. This menu item (or shortcut) creation logic is provided by the menuinst package.

With the release of 23.11.0, conda now supports menuinst v2, which enables the same experience across Windows, Linux, and macOS. This means package builders will be able to provide desktop icons across all operating systems, which can be especially useful for GUI applications. See the documentation for more details.

If you don't want conda to create shortcuts, you can disable it via:

  • shortcuts: false entry in your .condarc configuration
  • CONDA_SHORTCUTS=false environment variable
  • --no-shortcuts command-line flag

✨ What's New? ✨​

  • Introduce a new plugin hook, CondaHealthCheck, as part of conda doctor.
  • Include activate and deactivate in the --help command list.
  • Prioritize download of larger packages to prevent smaller ones from waiting.
  • Display the used solver in conda info output for debugging purposes.
  • Add __conda virtual package.
  • Implement resume capability for interrupted package downloads.

🔧 What Got Fixed? 🔧​

  • Log expected JLAP range-request errors at info level, occurring when the remote file has rolled over.
  • Fix a bug causing an error when options like --debug are used without specifying a command.
  • Improve CTRL-C (cancellation) handling for parallel download threads.
  • Allow overriding of CONDA_FETCH_THREADS/fetch_threads to set parallel package downloads besides the default 5.
  • Require requests >=2.28 for enhanced response.json() exception handling.
  • Apply callback=reset_context in conda.plan to resolve conda-build + conda-libmamba-solver incompatibilities.

🌅 What's Marked for Deprecation? 🌅​

  • Remove ruamel_yaml fallback; use ruamel.yaml exclusively.
  • Mark conda.plugins.subcommands.doctor.health_checks.display_health_checks for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda.plugins.subcommands.doctor.health_checks.display_report_heading for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda.gateways.anaconda_client.EnvAppDirs for pending deprecation. Use platformdirs instead.
  • Mark conda._vendor.cpuinfo for pending deprecation.
  • Switch from requests/pip's vendored chardet to charset_normalizer.
  • Switch from conda._vendor.appdirs to platformdirs.
  • Switch from conda._vendor.distro to distro.

📄 What's New in Documentation? 📄​

The https://docs.conda.io/ docs have received a major overhaul! 🎉

Go take a look and let us know what you think! 🤩

Changes in Conda-Build 3.28.0/3.28.1​

To update conda-build, run:

conda install -n base conda-build=3.28.1

📢 Special Announcement 📢​

In the upcoming January 2024 release of conda-build, significant changes are underway. We're set to transition to the CalVer versioning system. Additionally, we'll be formally embracing CEP 8 to manage our release schedule. Moreover, an expedited version of CEP 9 will be adopted for deprecation handling, omitting the pending deprecation phase and streamlining the period from deprecation to removal to a mere 2 months.

✨ What's New? ✨​

  • Add stblib jinja function similar to compiler to explicitly define sysroot dependencies.
  • Utilize conda-known subdirs for selector definitions, enabling conda_build to support new architectures with only an updated conda version. New OS support requires additional information for proper conda_build functionality, including UNIX-like platform designation, shared library prefix, and binary archive format for the platform.
  • Eliminate unnecessary cache clearing from conda_build.build.test.
  • Consolidate which_package implementations and replace conda.models.dist.Dist usage with conda.models.records.PrefixRecords.

🔧 What Got Fixed? 🔧​

  • Display package file name in get_hash_input.
  • Fall back to solved record filename to locate the downloaded tarball in get_upstream_pins.
  • Prevent overwriting of variants in high priority cbc.yaml entries when absent in lower priority cbc.yamls.
  • Correct the check for a missing anaconda-client to display a useful error message.
  • Fix conda_index.index verbose DEBUG/INFO message logging.
  • (3.28.1) Relax metadata check for package/version when outputs are defined.

🌅 What's Marked for Deprecation? 🌅​

  • Mark conda_build.environ.clean_pkg_cache for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.conda_interface.IndexRecord for pending deprecation. Use conda.models.records.PackageRecord instead.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.is_string for pending deprecation. Use isinstance(value, str) instead.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.is_codefile for pending deprecation. Use conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.codefile_class instead.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.codefile_type for pending deprecation. Use conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.codefile_class instead.
  • Mark conda_build.inspect_pkg.dist_files for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.inspect_pkg.which_package(avoid_canonical_channel_name) for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.inspect_pkg._installed for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.ldd.get_package_files for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.mach_o_change for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.inspect_rpath for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.get_runpaths for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.otool_sys for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.os_utils.pyldd.ldd_sys for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.post.determine_package_nature for pending deprecation. Use conda_build.post.get_dsos and conda_build.post.get_run_exports instead.
  • Mark conda_build.post.library_nature(subdir, bldpkgs_dirs, output_folder, channel_urls) for pending deprecation.
  • Mark conda_build.post.dist_from_names for pending deprecation. Query conda.core.prefix_data.PrefixData instead.
  • Mark conda_build.post.FakeDist for pending deprecation. Use conda.models.records.PrefixRecord instead.
  • Mark conda_build.post._get_fake_pkg_dist for pending deprecation. Use conda.models.records.PrefixRecord instead.
  • Mark conda_build.utils.relative for pending deprecation. Use os.path.relpath or pathlib.Path.relative_to instead.

📄 What's New in Documentation? 📄​

The https://docs.conda.io/ docs have received a major overhaul! 🎉

Go take a look and let us know what you think! 🤩

Changes in Conda-Libmamba-Solver 23.11.0/23.11.1​

To update conda-libmamba-solver, run:

conda install -n base conda-libmamba-solver=23.11.1

✨ What's New? ✨​

  • (23.11.1) Raise a friendlier InvalidSpec error instead of RuntimeError when libmamba detects a problem in the configured solver jobs.
  • (23.11.1) Ensure specs, SolverInputState.installed and SolverInputState.virtual containers, are consistently sorted.

🔧 What Got Fixed? 🔧​

  • Do not use libmamba's default signal handler so users can Ctrl-C from conda.
  • Defer conda-build-specific exception definition and import until it is needed by the solver.
  • Interpret "excluded by strict priority" solver errors as proper satisfiability conflicts and avoid printing related yet uninformative warnings.
  • Ensure that historic specs are kept in the environment, even if that means raising a conflict.
  • (23.11.1) Configure pinned specs just once to avoid solver bugs related with their persistence (i.e. inability to downgrade environments if pinned specs are present and a transient dependency needs to be removed).
  • (23.11.1) Detect whether a channel is part of a multichannel so the latter is used in the PackageRecord entries for conda-build. Fixes an issue with conda-build and custom multichannels.
  • (23.11.1) Allow authenticated URLs in default_channels and other multichannels.
  • (23.11.1) Preserve authentication while reloading local channels.

📄 What's New in Documentation? 📄​

The https://conda.github.io/conda-libmamba-solver/ docs have received a major overhaul! 🎉

Go take a look and let us know what you think! 🤩

We ❤️ Our Community​

Altogether, we had 7 (!) new contributors this release cycle; thank you to all of our open source community members for helping making these improvements possible.

If you have ideas or want to help improve any of the conda community projects, we love to see new (and returning) contributors! 😄