Announcements

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2023

2023-09-25: Python 3.12 migration and Python 3.11 by default

With the Python 3.12 release approaching, we have already started the rebuild of packages for it. Although, there is no offical Python 3.12 release yet, the release candidates of it will have the same ABI. Thus packages built with the release candidate can be safely used with the later offical release. To support rebuilding packages on conda-forge while ensuring Python release candidates don’t end up in end-user solves, we have uploaded the Python 3.12.0rc2 and rc3 builds to the conda-forge/label/python_rc channel. The python312 migration adds this channel in the feedstock builds to the Python 3.12 matrix entry. On the offical release of Python 3.12, we will adjust the migration and remove the channel again. Then (on a rerender), feedstock will only consume the main channel again.

Overall, this approach allows us to provide Python 3.12 for a wide range of packages already on the day of the offical Python 3.12 release.

At the same time, we have stopped the Python 3.11 migration and added it to the list of default Python versions on conda-forge.

2023-08-24: Bumping Minimum MacOS version to 10.13

We will bump the minimum MacOS version from 10.9 (released in Oct. 2013, end-of-life since Dec. 2016) to 10.13 (released Sept. 2017, end-of-life since Dec. 2020). The main reason we managed to support 10.9 this long at all, is that conda-forge is able to ship an up-to-date C++ standard library for OSX, libcxx, superseding the old one present in the MacOS SDK on the system (at least from the point-of-view of the respective conda environments).

However, several core packages in the ecosystem now require at least 10.13 (or will very soon), in a way that we cannot be circumvent. These packages include libcxx, starting with version 17.0. This change will not affect already published artifacts, but in the near future, all new builds for OSX will require at least 10.13. This constraint will be implemented through the __osx virtual package, but the details of how we will achieve this are still being worked out. Only conda versions 4.8.0 or newer have this virtual package. If you are using a system with MacOS older than 10.13 and are using conda older than 4.8.0, you will need to either upgrade conda to at least 4.8.0 or upgrade your system to at least MacOS 10.13.

2023-07-12: End-of-life for CentOS 6

As you may be aware, we have delayed the deprecation of our CentOS 6 build system the linux64 platform several times. We have now set a formal deprecation date to be June 30, 2024. This date matches the end of extended life-cycle support from RedHat for RHEL 6. After this date, we build packages against CentOS 7 by default for linux64.

2023-01-09: conda-forge Google Group is Now Read-only - Move to Discourse

We have made the conda-forge Google Group read-only. Please use the new conda-forge discourse forum, our Gitter room, or it’s Matrix/Element counterpart instead.

2023-01-08: conda-forge/staged-recipes Feedstock Creation Job Moved

We have moved the CI job that makes new feedstocks to our conda-forge/admin-requests repo. The new location is reflected in the various links on repos and our status page.

2022

2022-11-16: Moving to .conda Artifacts

conda-forge is moving to producing conda artifacts in the version 2 package format (also known as .conda). These artifacts allow for more efficient indexing and maintenance of the ecosystem. Our admin migrations bot will begin making PRs to feedstocks to change them over to the new artifact format. You will need conda version 4.7 or later to use the new .conda artifacts. Please leave a comment on this issue if you encounter problems or have feedback.

2022-11-04: Releasing Python 3.8.14, 3.9.14, and 3.10.7

The CPython versions 3.8.14, 3.9.14, and 3.10.7 were released some weeks ago to mitigate CVE-2020-10735. The chosen mitigation strategy might cause errors (e.g. ValueError: Exceeds the limit (4300) for integer string conversion) in some libraries. If you are affected, please read the announcement and learn about the available workarounds in the CPython documentation.

The conda-forge team has decided to build and publish these releases with no additional changes. The new packages will be made available on or after 2022-11-10, following Anaconda’s decision.

2022-09-27: Conda Moving to CalVer

Conda is moving to CalVer per CEP 8. The first CalVer and last SemVer should be 22.9.0 and 4.14.0 respectively. This change maintains version order so you should not expect any issues.

2022-08-24: Dropping Python 3.7

Conda-Forge has been providing support for Python 3.7 for 4 years now. Increasingly projects are moving off it (particularly in the PyData community). With Python 3.11’s release coming around the corner (October 3rd), conda-forge plans to drop Python 3.7 support when Python 3.11 comes out. This will lighten the load on conda-forge infrastructure and make room for the new versions the community would like to support.

More details can be found in issue conda-forge-pinning-feedstock#2623. Feedback is welcome there.

2022-08-17: Dropping PyPy 3.7

Conda-forge has supported PyPy since almost 2.5 years now, and the initial PyPy 3.7 builds have been superseded in almost all aspects by the newer builds for 3.8 & 3.9. We are therefore dropping PyPy 3.7 as a supported python version, and will keep focusing on the more contemporary PyPy builds.

2022-08-11: Moving to Visual Studio toolchain vc142

Microsoft has deprecated the Visual Studio (VS) 2017 compiler and removed it from all the CI they control (notably Azure Pipelines & Github Actions). This means that the default toolchain (== C/C++ compiler, linker, standard libraries, and related utilities) of that VS version - vc141 - is getting less and less use in upstream libraries (because public hosted CI doesn’t use it anymore by default), and therefore support for it is bitrotting at an accelerating pace. We are therefore planning to move our toolchain on windows to vc142 (the default in VS2019) in two weeks, on 2022-08-25.

This will not affect you as a general user of conda-forge packages on windows; the only impact is that if you are locally compiling against artefacts produced by conda-forge and are still using VS2017 yourself, you will need to upgrade your compiler (VS2019 is a drop-in replacement & ABI-compatible).

2022-07-22: Azure OSX VM Image Bumped to Version 11

Azure is removing their OSX 10.15 VM image and so we are bumping to 11. You will need to rerender your feedstock to get this change. Feedstocks without the new VM image specified will not build after Azure fully removes the old image. Please get in touch with us if you have issues or questions!

2022-04-23: Packages for Qt/PyQt 5.15.2 are now available

After more than six months, the conda-forge team and contributors have managed to update the Qt5 packages to the latest LTS version, 5.15.2. Major changes include separating the package for QtWebEngine (qt-webengine) from the rest of Qt (now in a new package called qt-main). This allows recipes that do not use any of the WebEngine components to depend only on qt-main, reducing the total size of the downloaded binaries. As a result of this, qt will be a metapackage that installs both qt-main and qt-webengine as dependencies.

With respect to PyQt, the new packages now are in sync with respect to their corresponding PyPI releases, which means that the pyqt package will only provide the core components of Qt, leaving pyqtwebengine and pyqtcharts as optional packages that extend PyQt by providing the QtWebEngine and QtCharts components, respectively. A migrator will be put in place to help with the transition.

2022-04-20: New Semi-automated PR Labeling in conda-forge/staged-recipes

A GitHub action now monitors comments on issues in staged-recipes and will add language and review labels to issues/PRs when a staged-recipes sub-team is mentioned in a comment. It adds the Awaiting author contribution label if a member of staged-recipes removes the review-requested label. Unlike notifications, which are only sent to the users which are members of a team at the time of the mention, labels are persistent and visible to everyone, so they should be very helpful for identifying old PRs that need attention.

2022-04-03: CircleCI and Drone.io Deprecated for New Feedstocks

Due to technical issues in generating new feedstocks, we have deprecated using CircleCI and Drone.io for builds of new feedstocks. Existing CircleCI builds, if any, should be moved to azure. Existing Drone.io builds can be moved to Travis CI or cross-compiled/emulated builds on azure.

2022-03-28: PyPy 3.8+3.9 Migration

We have begun rolling out packages built for PyPy3.8 and PyPy3.9. This work may take a few weeks. See Using PyPy as an interpreter in the user docs for information on how to set up a PyPy environment. Please report issues to the PyPy developers at https://foss.heptapod.net/pypy/pypy/issues. We are also dropping PyPy3.7 in each feedstock as the newer versions of PyPy are added. New versions of migrated feedstocks will not be built for PyPy3.7 and that version of the python interpreter will not be receiving updates. As usual, you can track the status of the migration on our status page.

2022-03-06: Travis CI Usage Deprecated for win_*, osx_*, and linux_64 Platforms

Due to changes in how Travis CI tracks open-source build time, we are deprecating using it for the win_*, osx_*, and linux_64 platforms. Travis CI will be available only for platforms in their partner queues. These platforms currently include ppc64le, aarch64 and s390x. Rerendering will raise an error if Travis CI is used for a non-partner queue platform in the conda-forge GitHub organization.

2022-02-13: Default branch migration from master to main

We will be migrating the default branches of all feedstocks and other conda-forge repos from master to main. We do expect some minor hiccups while this migration is going on. You will need to change to the main branch from master on any local clones via the following git commands:

git branch -m master main
git fetch origin
git branch -u origin/main main
git remote set-head origin -a

If you encounter any problems, please comment on this Github issue.

2021

2021-12-02: CentOS 7 docker images are now the default

We are moving all conda-forge linux-64 jobs to use CentOS 7-based docker images. This will help users avoid conda/mamba solver errors where dependencies that need CentOS 7 cannot be installed. Importantly, our compiler stack will still default to using a CentOS 6 sysroot unless the recipe explicitly lists the CentoOS 7 sysroot package. This build configuration means that our core system ABI on linux will remain largely CentOS 6-compatible, keeping support for older systems largely intact. We will reconsider moving the default ABI to CentOS 7 at a later date.

2021-11-17: cloud.drone.io no longer working

The cloud.drone.io service we use for aarch64 builds is no longer accepting our API requests for triggering builds. We have been in contact with them, but have been unable to resolve the issue. Going forward, we will still be adding feedstocks to cloud.drone.io but we have moved all aarch64 builds to emulated builds on Azure. Cross-compilers are available as well for resource-intensive builds. Please rerender your feedstock as needed to get the updated configuration.

2021-10-20: conda-forge now uses mambabuild as default

conda-forge now uses mamba during the build process (via conda mambabuild of the boa project). This was changed in conda-smithy 3.13.0 and should automatically apply when re-rendering.

2021-10-13: GCC 10 and clang 12 as default compilers for Linux and macOS

These compilers will become the default for building packages in conda-forge. One notable change in gcc 10 is that the -fopenmp flag in FFLAGS is dropped. In clang 12, -std=c++14 explicit flag has been dropped from CXXFLAGS, as it is the default compilation mode for clang 12. In gcc 11, the default is -std=gnu++17. In clang>=12 and gcc>=11, we will not provide an explicit C++ standard, and will defer to the compiler default.

2021-10-04: python 3.6 is now dropped when building conda-forge packages

Python 3.6 is end-of-life in December 2021 and we are dropping support for it early to avoid having to rebuild packages as part of python 3.10 migration as that would save lots of CI resources.

2021-09-30: defaults channel is now dropped when building conda-forge packages

You can get the previous behaviour by using the channel_sources setting in conda-forge.yml

2021-05-22: conda-forge is now citable!

You can now cite conda-forge using our Zenodo entry! This entry credits the entire conda-forge community for its hard work in building our amazing ecosystem.

2020

2020-12-16: Moving to CentOS 7 and CentOS 6 End-of-Life

conda-forge’s compiler stack uses repackaged libraries from CentOS 6 to supply certain libraries, notably glibc when building recipes. We currently default to using CentOS 6 with the glibc 2.12 ABI. However, CentOS 6 reached end-of-life in November 2020 and increasingly software packages require at least CentOS 7 with the glibc 2.17 ABI. We also realize that due to recent events, some communities that may have been planning to skip CentOS 7 and move straight to CentOS 8 might be reconsidering those plans. Further, they may not be ready for a full-scale switch to CentOS 7. Thus the conda-forge core team has decided to delay moving to CentOS 7 until sometime early next year, likely the end of January 2021 at the earliest. We are actively looking for feedback from our users on this issue. Please do get in touch if you have comments or concerns!

2020-12-02: Artifact Validation

In an effort to better secure conda-forge, we are developing a process to validate artifacts before they are uploaded to anaconda.org. This validation will look for various security-related items, such as artifacts that overwrite key pieces of certain packages. While this process is in development, we will not be rejecting uploads. However, we will start scanning our current artifacts and working with the maintainers of those artifacts to mark broken any which we deem a security risk. We will also be running validation on new artifacts being upload and will report any issues back to feedstocks. At a future date, artifacts that do not pass validation will not be uploaded.

2020-10-08: Compiler Upgrade to GCC 9.3.0

We will be upgrading all GCC-based compilers to version 9.3.0 on all platforms. This upgrade will not affect C or C++ code, but will require a rebuild of all feedstocks that use FORTRAN due to a change in the SONAME. During this rebuild, we will keep the old compiler versions in production, temporarily doubling the build matrix. Once the migration is deemed complete, these old compiler versions will be removed.

2020-08-07: Completed New Staging Process for anaconda.org Uploads

We have now completed rolling out the new staging process for uploads to anaconda.org. Direct uploads to the conda-forge channel will no longer work. If you are having trouble with package uploads, please rerender your feedstock with the latest version of conda-smithy. As always, if you need help, bump us on Gitter or GitHub!

2020-08-06: Fixed Maintenance Process for Feedstock Teams

We have fixed a bug where the maintainers of feedstocks listed in the meta.yaml did not match those listed in the GitHub team. Due to this change, you may notice emails from GitHub informing you that you have been removed from a GitHub team if you have recently removed yourself from a feedstock via changing the meta.yaml. A similar fix has been applied for maintenance teams as well, though you will not see emails from this fix.

2020-07-23: CentOS 7 sysroot Now Available for linux-64 Builds

We are very excited to announce that new compilers based on repackaged sysroot’s from CentOS 7 are now available for all linux-* platforms. These compilers will be the default going forward for any gcc, gxx, and gfortran versions past 8.4.0 on ppc64le and 7.5.0 on x86_64/aarch64.

On the linux-64 platform, we have also built the CentOS 6 sysroot and set it as the default, consistent with our current compilers. To use the CentOS 7 sysroot on linux-64, add a requirement of sysroot_linux-64 2.17 to the build section of your recipe. You also need to set the proper Docker image in your conda_build_config.yaml. See Using CentOS 7 for details.

2020-07-23: Strict channel priority in builds for OSX and Linux

We have changed the OSX and Linux platforms to enforce strict channel priority in package builds. This change means that if a package is available in the conda-forge channels, the conda solver will not consider any versions of the package from other channels. Users can disable this by setting channel_priority: flexible in their conda-forge.yml.

2020-07-23: NumPy 1.16 is the minimal NumPy version on all platforms

In accordance with NEP-29, we have switched to have numpy 1.16 as the minimum supported version on all platforms.

2020-07-17: Conda-forge is building openblas with both pthreads and openmp on Linux

The main change is that openblas will use pthreads for threading by default on Linux instead of the previous openmp default. The openmp builds can be recovered by installing libopenblas=*=*openmp*.

2020-07-16: Core Dependency Tree Package Changes

conda-forge is moving to a new system for generating Core Dependency Tree (CDT) packages. These changes include

  • CDT packages will no longer be built using feedstocks and this practice is officially deprecated.

  • Any current CDT packages in feedstocks will be moved to the new conda-forge/cdt-builds repo and the feedstock will be archived. Members of core will be doing this slowly on an as-needed basis, so it may not happen right away.

  • Requests for new CDTs should be submitted as PRs to the conda-forge/cdt-builds repo.

These changes are being made so that conda-forge can provide access to CentOS 7 / glibc 2.17 for linux-64 builds. They will also move more of the packages needed for conda-forge builds into the conda-forge channels making builds more reliable.

2020-07-16: Moving from clang 9 to clang 10

conda-forge is moving to clang 10 on macOS! Check the release notes for what is new, breaking, or deprecated.

2020-07-15: CFEP-18: Removing static libraries from the main build

With CFEP-18 we now have a policy on how to deal with static packages. The most important change here is that we will be removing static libraries from the main packages and moving them to -static suffixed packages. -static packages will not be built by default but only on request.

2020-07-03: cf-mark-broken renamed to admin-requests

The cf-mark-broken repo has been renamed to admin-requests. It still serves the same purpose. However, we have expanded the capabilities of the repo to be able to mark packages as not broken.

2020-05-28: New Process for Marking Packages as Broken

We are changing the way we mark packages as broken to better match the defaults channel and to better enable reproducible environments that depended on broken packages. We will now be adding the broken label to packages but leaving them on the main channel. In order to make sure they do not appear in the repodata.json for the main channel, we will be patching the repo data to remove them using the removals feature.

Users will notice the following changes

  • The packages on anaconda.org will now have both the main and the broken labels.

  • All requests to mark packages as broken must be sent to the cf-mark-broken repo.

  • Members of core can no longer mark things as broken by hand since the repo data patching must be done as well.

  • The package metadata for broken packages may differ slightly from when they were on the main channel.

  • The only correct source of package metadata is now the repodata.json etc on anaconda.org. Any other sources may be missing critical changes.

2020-05-09: New Staging Process for anaconda.org Uploads

Starting this week, we are changing the way we upload packages to anaconda.org. We will move from direct uploads to the conda-forge main channel to using a staging organization/channel combined with a copy request from the staging channel to the production channel. This new process will allow us to perform some validation on the outputs of feedstocks before they are released.

What will you see as a feedstock maintainer?

  • Starting this week, the admin-migrations service will be making commits to all feedstocks to provision them with the necessary configuration, API keys, and tokens.

  • Each feedstock will now be provisioned with a secret token. This token should not be shared or taken out of the CI services. It is used to identify the feedstock during the upload process.

  • The admin-migrations service will be setting a new top-level key in the conda-forge.yml, conda_forge_output_validation: true. This key indicates to conda-smithy that it should include the output validation calls in the feedstock CI scripts.

  • Currently open PRs will need to have this key added by hand and then rerendered.

  • When PRs are running the CI scripts, they will do some initial validation of the feedstock outputs. If this validation fails, the CI job will fail. Please see the CI logs for the error message which is printed after conda-build runs.

  • Once a PR is merged to master, the copy from the staging channel to the production channel will happen automatically.

  • Should a copy request fail, you will get a notification via a comment on the commit to master.

  • As part of this process, uploads from appveyor will no longer be allowed unless there is a significant barrier to using azure. We have recently upgraded the compiler infrastructure on azure to support this change in policy.

Despite our extensive testing, we do not expect this change to be completely smooth, so please bear with us. As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or trouble, you can find us on Gitter or bump us directly on Github!

2020-03-24: vs2015 to vs2017 Transition

We are formally deprecating vs2015 in two weeks on 2020-04-07 and will move to vs2017. This change will enable us to support the usage of msbuild on Azure for the win platform and will provide additional support for C++. Most packages built with vs2015 can be linked with vs2017 toolchain (but not vice-versa). An exception is static libraries compiled with whole program optimization (/GL flag) which may be incompatible with the vs2017 toolchain. These static libraries will need to be rebuilt using vs2017.

2020-03-23: Appveyor Deprecation

We are now starting to formally deprecate Appveyor in favor of Azure for builds on the win platform. Note that we have not been adding appveyor to new feedstocks for a while, so this is not a completely new change in policy. We will now, however, begin to actively disable Appveyor builds on feedstocks not using it by turning off builds for GitHub push events. Additionally, we have been issuing PRs to any remaining feedstocks to move them to Azure. We are aware that some packages built with msbuild cannot yet be moved to Azure and so are leaving Appveyor on for those feedstocks for now.

2020-03-21: Python 2.7 Admin Command Available

A webservices admin command is now available to add Python 2.7 back to feedstocks. Put @conda-forge-admin add python 2.7 in the title on an issue in your feedstock. The admin webservices bot will then issue a PR adding back Python 2.7. Note that this PR will remove other Python builds and any win, aarch64, or ppc64le builds. If you want to keep those, merge the PR into a separate branch on your feedstock.

2020-03-18: Python 2.7 and vs2008 Deprecation

  • Python 2.7 is no longer supported by the upstream developers as of 2020-01-01. Conda-forge is thus deprecating its Python 2.7 support. Conda-forge will provide no ongoing support for Python 2.7 builds and any existing builds are provided on an “as-is” basis.

  • A cf202003 label has been applied to the conda-forge channel for those who need a reference to the package index with Python 2.7.

  • We are removing support for vs2008 on Windows in conjunction with the deprecation of Python 2.7, as it was only supported to build this version of Python.

  • We will provide an admin command that will add back Python 2.7 to any feedstock. Note that as stated above, we cannot provide support for any Python 2.7 builds generated with this admin command. Further, this admin command will only work on osx-64 and linux-64 platforms.

2019

2019-09-30: Clang 9.0.0 and gfortran 7.3.0 as default compilers in OSX

  • If you maintain a feedstock that requires a C/C++ compiler, no changes necessary. A rerender should be done next time the feedstock is updated to use the new compiler.

  • If you maintain a feedstock with a Fortran compiler, a PR to upgrade to gfortran 7.3.0 was already issued. If that PR was merged, there’s nothing to do. If not, contact core if you need help migrating.

2019-03-28: We overhauled the blas support in conda-forge.

  • Our packages now build against NETLIB’s reference implementation.

  • You as a user can now choose the implementation available at runtime.

For more information please refer to the documentation.

2019-01-22: It has happened! Conda-forge has migrated to the latest compilers 🎉.

If you:

  • maintain a compiled feedstock, it will likely need to be rerender

  • need to roll back to the old compilers, you can use the “cf201901” label

2018

2018-10-12: The rebuild is moving along nicely with almost a third of the packages completed.

Recently completed are NumPy and Openblas which should open up much of the python numeric stack. We’re only about 5 feedstocks away from opening up all of R as well.

2018-09-24: A minimal python 3.7 build is now available across all platforms and both compilers!

Yay!

2018-09-24: Deprecation notice for Python 3.5

As we start building out more of the Python 3.7 stack, we will no longer be building Python 3.5 packages.

No new python 3.5 packages will be built after 2018-10-01.

2018-09-20: The compiler migration is in full swing.

The bot will be making the rounds and modernizing more than 4000 packages. This is going to take a few months to get done so bear with us.

2018-09-10: Conda forge now has a magical status bar for tracking the progress of migrations.

You can find this at conda-forge.org/status.