cpip

What is it?

This tool builds a conda environment with pip dependencies together in a way that allows for cross-distro/cross-version compatibility.

They are two ways to use cpip:

• cpip pack will package the environment into a portable tarball.
• cpip create will simply create a ready-to-use environment.

The advantage of having a create command gives the user the option to create the environment in the exact same way as the one that will be deployed via the pack command.

How does it work?

1. Assembles an environment with basic conda commands from given conda environment files
2. Installs cross-compilers and downloads/compiles pip packages
3. Packages conda environment via conda-pack tool
4. Unpacks environment to desired location (only for create command)

Supported Operating Systems

• Linux
• macOS

System Requirements

• conda (version 4.6 or higher)
• poetry (optional)

Environment Dependencies

• conda-pack (installed via conda)
• jq (installed via conda)
• python (installed via conda)

Usage

1) Add cpip to your PATH environment variable

The command below will add cpip to your PATH environment variable; make sure to substitute <cpip_repository> for the absolute path of the cpip repository.

export PATH=<cpip_repository>/bin>:$PATH

To keep this configuration every time you open a new shell, make sure to add this command to your shell configuration file.

• for login bash shells this will be ~/.bash_profile
• for non-login bash shells this will be ~/.bashrc

2) Update Conda

conda update -n base -c defaults conda

3) Update Terminal Environment

conda init + restart terminal

4) Create Build Environment

conda env create from base of cpip directory

5) Activate Build Environment

conda activate cpip

6) Run 'cpip pack' or 'cpip create'

For more information: cpip pack --help or cpip create --help

7) Unpack and Activate

Initial Setup (if using 'cpip pack'):
  1. untar archive        --> tar -xf <archive>
  2. activate environment --> source <env-root>/bin/activate
  3. fix path prefixes    --> conda-unpack

Normal Use:
  *  activate             --> source <env-root>/bin/activate
  *  deactivate           --> source deactivate

NOTE: It's possible to change the path of <env-root> after untarring, as long that is done prior to running conda-unpack.

Cleaning Caches

Use cpip clean command to clean the conda and/or pip caches

Other Things to Note

Installing pip dependencies with Conda vs. Poetry

pip dependencies can be installed via conda or poetry. It is recommended to use a poetry project to define all the pip packages in your project; this allows for lockfiles to pin package versions properly. If you decide to use poetry, it makes sense to move ALL pip dependencies from the conda environment file(s) to a poetry project file.

Cross-Compilers

Cross-compilers will be installed if any pip dependencies are detected, or the --command option is used. They will always be uninstalled automatically before the environment is finalized.

The cross-compilers used are Anaconda compiler tools (see here). They are not true cross-compilers since they are not configured to work cross-platform. However, they are configured to give a high degree of compatibility from one distro/version to another.

NOTE: If any Anaconda compiler tools or associated runtime libraries are present in the environment file(s), they will be removed completely. Only the compiler runtime libraries will be reinstalled, and potentially of different versions than before.

Running Commands in the Newly Created Environment

Immediately after the environment is created, it may be desired to run certain commands in the active environment. To do this, we can use the --command option as many times as desired to pass in commands that we want to run while the environment is active. cpip will ensure that cross-compilers are installed in the environment, so that the build environment for running commands is consistent with the build environment for compiling pip packages.

Order of Environments

This tool can take more than one conda environment file. These files will be loaded in the order they are given on the command line. Different command line orders may produce slightly different environments.

Conda Configuration

Changing certain configuration values may yield unexpected results.

Poetry Configuration

cpip pack internally sets settings.virtualenvs.create to false, but restores the setting to its original value upon failure or completion.

Concurrency

Running more than one cpip command simultaneously is not supported.

TODO: Non-Unix Systems

For systems that don't respect the XDG_CACHE_HOME environment variable, Poetry may have concurrency issues, however, if using a poetry.lock file, this will relieve any potential cache conflicts.

The cache issues can be solved completely if poetry allows for the something more flexible like a --poetry-cache-dir command line option.