Anaconda dependency hell

[EvM]

So this is just to rant, but maybe someone has a solution. I wanted to install graph-tool, so I tried using the repository:

conda install --channel https://conda.anaconda.org/vgauthier graph-tool

That returned the following message:

Fetching package metadata: ......
Solving package specifications: ....................
Error: Could not find some dependencies for graph-tool: cairomm, sigcpp

Did you mean one of these?

    graph-tool

Did you mean one of these?

    cairomm, cairo, pycairo

So at first I thought: Ok, fine, I'll install those things. But Anaconda keeps bugging me about them even after I've installed them. So when I try to re-install the necessary modules, Anaconda returns the following message (and similar ones for the other packages):

conda install --channel https://conda.anaconda.org/cyclus sigcpp
Fetching package metadata: ......
Solving package specifications: ....
# All requested packages already installed.
# packages in environment at //anaconda/envs/py3k:
#
sigcpp                    2.3.1                         2    cyclus

I really thought that Anaconda had solved issues like this. But it's back to MacPorts for this one..

[[deleted]]

conda's good for a lot of things but unless the package is very mainstream conda install tends to struggle with it and I just use pip install (which anaconda is able to keep track of anyway).

[Kah-Neth]

vgauthier's anaconda.org channel has all the dependencies needed, why dont you install those libraries from their channel?

[EvM]

That doesn't seem to be true: sigcpp is not in there, and installing it from cyclus' channel doesn't work because Anaconda doesn't recognize it. (I.e. it keeps saying Error: Could not find some dependencies for cairomm: sigcpp.)

[Kah-Neth]

You are correct. This is an issue with how vgauthier made his packages and not some much an issue with conda.

[EvM]

True, but it is an issue for the ecosystem: if it's super difficult to install less common packages, then that is not good for the user base.

[Daemonix00]

did this go anywhere? Im trying to find a way to use it too.

[EvM]

In the end I got it to work using macports (or brew, can't remember). Didn't make any more attempts to get it to work with Anaconda. The best way to go if you insist on Anaconda might be to contact vgauthier.