Using pre release builds
If you'd like to use the pre-release conda builds you can install them with this command:
conda install -c rdkit/label/nightly rdkit
They are available for Windows, Linux, and the Mac.
In order to give the RDKit community the option to try, and provide feedback on, upcoming new features, we have started periodically making conda builds of the RDKit master branch available. The builds and deployments are automated but we decided that it'd doesn't make sense to deploy a new nightly after every commit so we trigger them manually.
The RDKit has quite good automated testing in place and the code that's behind these builds has passed all those tests, so in principle it should be safe to use these builds to do "real work". However there are some sizable caveats you should be aware of:
- The builds themselves should be viewed as "transient": These builds are not connected to zenodo (so they don't get a DOI and aren't archived) and I will periodically delete old nightlies.
- New features have almost certainly not been tested as thoroughly as things that have already been released.
- The API for new features can be (and often is) changed without warning up until the first official release of the feature.
- At the moment the RDKit version string (i.e.
rdkit.__version__) does not change from build to build. So all nightlies that precede the 2020.09 release will have the version2020.09.1.dev1. We may fix this in the future.
We provide these builds using Azure DevOps and Anaconda Cloud. We're really grateful that Microsoft and Anaconda make these services available to open-source projects for free. This is a tremendous service to the community!
