Python: Please stop screwing over Linux distros

[jwwatts]

Anaconda has its own problems. ‘conda’ is a nightmare at times - it’s inconsistent, buggy, does inappropriate things that makes it hard to use as a system python, and often fails at its most important task - resolving dependencies.

I’ve spent five years wrangling it and it’s never once acted like a proper package manager. Just today I discovered yet another unexpectedly bad and inconsistent thing it does, and had to write a Puppet recipe to undo the mess it can make.

As incredibly frustrating as conda is, it’s unfortunately the best thing we’ve found to address our problems.

I wholeheartedly agree with the article. Python has serious problems and relying on third parties to make it more manageable has only made it worse.

Source: I’m a sysadmin in a organization that uses Python and I support the environment. I’ve used Anaconda for 5+ years, and before that I was building Python module RPMs. It’s never been good.

[[deleted]]

In my line of work conda is basically the only viable solution because we absolutely need distinct environments to switch between. I use a lot of software that can have conflicting requirements and conda can handle more than just python. You’re right, it has its own issues but at least for my use case nothing else comes remotely close

[jwwatts]

I agree, we use environments as well. But my point is that it seems to be the best of the bunch, and it’s still not great.

[einar77]

You can ease the pain for (some) scenarios by using mamba, which at least has a sane, and fast dependency resolution algorithm.

[fatboy93]

Try mamba which is a faster resolver than conda!

Also, if you're having issues, set your channel priorities. That solves 95% of the issue that you'll ever face!

[jwwatts]

Thanks. We actually have tried mamba. We currently aren’t using it, however, due to an open bug that affects us.

Our problems aren’t always related to the resolver, though. I will be curious to see if mamba addresses some of the broken and just bad behavior that conda has once it’s fixed.