Inconsistencies of the conda configuration system

[jaimergp]

Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open reports and couldn't find a duplicate

Summary

There are a number of inconsistencies and/or surprising behavior in the conda configuration system. Part of it comes from the homemade Configuration object, plus the singleton pattern, plus the kitchen-sink approach to store many convenience variables and state in the conda.base.context.context object.

There are also many sources of the configuration values:

• Hardcoded defaults in the Python modules
• Several .condarc / condarc.d/* files, at the system, user and environment level
• Auto-generated CONDA_* environment variables (but no warning if they are mispelled)

On top of this we have:

• Surprising merging rules like extended lists and updated dictionaries instead of overrides.
• Lacking documentation
• Intricate conda config implementation with way too many flags but a simplistic implementation with some undefined behaviours.
• No schema! The tooling ecosystem might add their own data to the config files, and conda will ignore it, or silently delete it or who knows what.

The cherry on top is that at some point this will have to be made extensible to accommodate the plugin system in some sane way...

Linked Issues & PRs

Environment specific configuration

• conda install/update --name env does not load environment-specific .condarc file #10637
• Environment-specific configurations leak into new environments #11874
• Environment-specific conda pinned file vs global 'pinned' file - precedence and usage #10041
• make platform configurable via condarc #10695
• Setting conda environment variable containing = symbol does not work, works in bash #10503
• Setting an environment variable does not work when value contains a dollar sign $ #10126
• Env-specific changeps1=false policy still changes PS1 #9265

Channels

• defaults channels leak into environments config #12136
• nodefaults channel should always be taken into account #12010
• conda config --append injects the default value too (e.g. --append channels conda-forge results in channels: [conda-forge, defaults] #12356

$CONDARC and .condarc search paths

• conda config --set doesn't respect $CONDARC #9962
• include statement in condarc and ~/.conda/condarc.d ignored #10874
• Search for config in ~/.config/conda/condarc on Linux #9840
• Override condarc path #6902 & Provide a way to override condarc search path: CONDA_NO_CONFIG_SEARCH_PATH #11838

Other bugs

• Config remove-key removes comments from condarc #10278
• conda config --set doesn't respect $CONDARC #9962
• CONDARC is ignored #10790
• CONDA_EXTRACT_THREADS (multithreaded package extraction) is not configurable #12286
• Hiding the .condarc file on Windows causes PermissionError #12199
• #! final directive in configuration files can be bypassed with environment variables #12122
• coult not set custom_channels from command line #10526

Other feature requests

• Add --name/-n option to conda config #12137
• Prevent state spilling all over the place #10779
• Revamp with pydantic

Documentation

The conda configuration documentation is particularly intricate. There are three pages, each with overlapping but different content. In particular, the "reference" (as per the Diátaxis framework) should be better separated.

• Conda > User Guide > Configuration
  • Sample .condarc file should have a "see also" note pointing to Conda configuration (below)
• Conda configuration
• Command reference > conda config

More issues / PRs:

• Document the #!final flag for condarc options #11377
• More information needed in docs on channel priorities #12232
• Sample .condarc file in docs needs more content #11907
• Multi-user installs #11731
• Propose clarifcation on merge strategy. #10295
• update config docs #9192
• Important flag to lock admin configuration missing in documentation #10821
• Conda remote_read_timeout_secs parameter is not being passed to pip install section #12237 & Add information about configuring pip in documentation #12255
• Quiet mode through .condarc #10811