Context: I’m trying to migrate from (multiple) conda projects to pants. One example would be non python packages like cuda, for which different projects may want different (conflicting) versions? For python dependencies, e.g. torch (in fact different torch versions are the reason for this), the documentation is fairly clear on how to have different resolves. Another example would be actual python packages that are only published on conda (e.g. https://github.com/oxpig/ANARCI)? Have you ever encountered this and do you have any advice?

My instincts tell me that working with conda would require a plugin to be developed

Well, before I go that far, it would be useful to know a little bit about how you use conda today?

For example, a conda environment might roughly correspond to a Pants resolve? Because different environments can have conflicting versions of things?

Is it, roughly, “build an environment, which happens to contain a python interpreter, and then use that interpreter for all the pants stuff”?

that might not be too hard to implement, apart from the issue of PEX scrubbing the sys.path

or pass in the right paths to pex

I tried

env_vars.add = ["PEX_INHERIT_PATH=prefer", ]

but this doesn’t work when running tests since pex runs in venv mode which doesn’t respect this feature. Before I went too deep this route I wanted to see if there were already known solutions

Trying to think how you could force Pants to use a conda interpreter

I think those identify as

CPython

, right?

(to use a conda interpreter for your code, not for running itself on, that is entirely orthogonal)

I’ll play with it

Feel free to chime in there, as a start?