Explanation of different conda channels

Question

What are the major conda channels, and what are their focuses? I can\'t seem to find any documentation on what major channels are available and when to choose one over the o

Answer 1

It would be useful to have an index for the "best of" public conda channels but no one seems to have tackled that project yet. When someone does take that on (perhaps you?), Wikipedia might be a better place than SO, which traditionally doesn't favour "lists of" because they are rarely kept up to date. In the meantime to get things started:

Two of the channels you mention are part of the ten official repos and described at https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/user-guide/tasks/using-repositories/:

• anaconda - anaconda.org - a mirror of the packages available in main, free, and pro hosted on repo.anaconda.com

• R - Microsoft R Open conda packages and Anaconda, Inc.’s R conda packages. This channel is included in conda’s “defaults” channel. When creating new environments, MRO is now chosen as the default R implementation.

Community led and not part of the Anaconda corp umbrella:

• bioconda - specializing in bioinformatics software

• conda-forge - A community led collection of recipes, build infrastructure and distributions for the conda package manager.