condax (forked)

What is this?

condax is a package manager exclusively for installing commands. condax, built on top of conda variants, frees you from activating and deactivating conda environments while keeping programs in separate environments.

condax was originally developed by Marius van Niekerk . More features have been added here after the version 0.0.5.

Examples

Here is how you can install node. You can just execute it without activating its associated environment. node still lives in its own environment so there is no worry about dependencies.

condax install nodejs

# Then node is ready to run.
node --version

There is no magic about the operation, and you can even do the same without having condax; the trick is to use conda run (or micromamba run) which is effectively sandwitching a command with conda activate and conda deactivate.

# Create an environent `nodejs`.
mamba env create -c conda-forge -n nodejs nodejs

# Run `node --verion` within the nodejs environment.
micromamba run -n nodejs node --version

condax just creates scripts like this, by default in ~/.local/bin, and manages them together with conda environments. It's simple, yet quite convenient when you deal with many commands from conda channels. (I'm looking at you, bioconda users 🤗.)

How to install and setup condax

Use pip or pipx to install directly from this repository.

$ pip install git+https://github.com/yamaton/condax

# Or, pipx install git+https://github.com/yamaton/condax if pipx is available.

Then add ~/.local/bin to your $PATH if not done already. This command will modify shell configuration. You may skip this if you manage $PATH by yourself.

condax ensure-path

Changes since the original condax 0.0.5

• Supports condax list to display installed executables.
• Uses mamba to manipulate environments if available.
• Uses micromamba to run commands.
• Supports installing a package with version constraints, like condax install ipython=8.3.
  • See package match specifications for the detail.
• Supports injecting/uninjecting packages onto/from an existing environment.
• Supports configuring via environment variables, or by passing a config file.
• Supports exporting and importing condax environments for reproducibility.
• Internally, this fork creates scripts calling micromamba run instead of creating symbolic links.
  • ➡️ Solves the issue with non-Python packages
• Follows XDG Base Directory Specification for directory and file locations:
  • Environments are created in ~/.local/share/condax/envs. (Previously ~/.condax.)
  • User configuration is loaded from ~/.config/condax/config.yaml if exists. (Previously ~/.condaxrc.)
  • Commands are exposed at ~/.local/bin in the same manner as before.

Known issues

• Support of Windows platform is imperfect, though it should work fine on WSL.

Migrating environments from condax v0.0.5

This forked version has changed the locations of the environments and the config file. If you have already installed packages with the original condax, please run the following, just once, to sort out.

condax repair --migrate