Conda and Tethys Platform

Last Updated: September 2024

This guide provides tips for using Conda effectively in your Tethys environment.

Conda Channels

All of the dependencies for Tethys Platform are installed from the conda-forge channel (see: Conda-Forge). We recommend that you install any additional packages that you need for development from conda-forge as well to ensure compatibility with the dependencies already installed. To do so, provide the -c option when installing packages:

conda install -c conda-forge <package>

Install from Conda-Forge Automatically

You may wish to configure your conda environment to automatically install packages from the conda-forge channel as follows:

conda config --add channels conda-forge

This command will add the conda-forge channel to the top of the channel list, making it the highest priority channel for retrieving packages. To learn more see Conda User Guide - Manage channels.

Using the libmamba Solver

The default solver for Conda is notoriously slow, especially in environments that have a lot of dependencies. Tethys development environments can accumulate dependencies as you install more packages and more apps.

The libmamba solver is a much more efficient solver for Conda and is recommended when you run into issues where your environment is taking too long to solve or fails to solve (see: A Faster Solver for Conda: Libmamba). Follow the steps below to use the libmamba solver with Tethys Platform.

  1. Install libmamba in base environment:

conda update -n base conda
conda install -n base conda-libmamba-solver

  1. Optionally, you may wish to set the libmamba solver as the default solver:

conda config --set solver libmamba

Install Tethys Platform

To install Tethys Platform using the libmamba solver, run the command with the --solver option:

conda create --solver libmamba -n tethys -c tethysplatform -c conda-forge tethys-platform django=<DJANGO_VERSION>

Alternatively, if you set libmamba to be the default solver in step 2, run the install command as usual and libmamba will be used automatically:

conda create -n tethys -c tethysplatform -c conda-forge tethys-platform django=<DJANGO_VERSION>

Important

Django Version

As of Tethys 3.4 and above, the version of Django is no longer pinned in the tethys-platform package. You will need to specify the version of Django that you want to use when creating the environment. This is especially important for production installations, as only the LTS versions of Django recieve bug and security fixes. For development installations, we recommend using the same version of Django that you plan to use in production. For production installations, we recommend using the current LTS version of Django (see: How to get Django - Supported Versions. Failing to provide the Django version will result in installing the latest version of Django which may not be the LTS version.

Install Packages

You can also use the --solver option to install new packages in the Tethys environment. Don't forget to activate the Tethys environment first:

conda activate tethys
conda install --solver libmamba -c conda-forge <package>

App Installation

The tethys install command that is used to install apps, also installs dependencies of the app that are listed in its install.yml. The tethys install command will use the default solver you have configured. So to install app dependencies using the libmamba solver, set the default solver to be libmamba (see above) and then run the tethys install command as usual.