Wanting a singular packaging tool/vision

[rgommers (Ralf Gommers)]

@pf_moore

but I think the important point is to have an intuition that casual users can relate to which lets them discuss solutions without always needing to special-case conda - because doing so just enforces the divide we currently have, and entrenches unhelpful views.

I don’t think Conda is unique here, it only comes up more because it’s the most popular tool with this set of capabilities. Spack is very similar to Conda in these respects, and is getting more popular even outside of HPC., And you can also get this from Nix (more “foreign”, but there’s for example flox which tries to make Nix more approachable - and they just raised a lot of venture funds so has at least the potential to get more prominent).

@pf_moore

The problem with that characterisation is that it gives me nothing to work with in terms of “assumed behaviours”. On the contrary, it’s essentially saying “but it’s different” for every analogy I try to construct.

Steve’s reply was hopefully helpful. I’m not sure it can get more useful than either such a reply or my analogies like pyenv-like and pip-like.

@steve.dower

What I’ve not seen written down before is an actual spec from the Conda side of how they would like pip to behave in the presence of conflicts when merging repositories. I’m fairly certain such a spec could be implemented without any actual special cases for Conda, but without spelling out what behaviour they want, none of us have a chance of providing it. (And it gives something concrete for devs to argue over and push back on.)

Great point - this would be super helpful to have. I indeed don’t think it exists right now. I’ll try to get something in written form from the Conda community. It may take a while, because it’s not an easy question, and I’m sure that there will be different opinions to take into account.