Advanced usage tips and tricks¶

Customising Conda behaviour¶

The behaviour of conda can be controlled by adding/removing options in the conda configuration file, .condarc.o

For details on how to customise conda behaviour, see

https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/configuration/use-condarc.html

Managing environments¶

Cloning an environment¶

The pre-built environments in CVMFS are read-only, and so cannot be modified by users. You can clone an environment as follows:

conda create --name <target> --clone <source>

e.g.:

conda create --name myigwn-py310 --clone igwn-py310

This should create an exact copy of an existing environment in your local directory (normally ~/.conda) that you can modify and upgrade freely.

Using `mamba` to update packages¶

Mamba is an alternative implementation of the conda environment solver (the thing that works out which packages to install) that may exhibit improved performance in some cases.

mamba is included in the base environment of the IGWN Conda Distribution in CVMFS, and is included in the Mambaforge distribution recommended for local users.

If you are having issues with conda install or similar commands taking forever to return, try using mamba install instead.

Using Conda environments¶

Using Conda environments with HTCondor¶

The IGWN Conda Distributions in CVMFS can be used easily in HTCondor workflows. For the most up-to-date instructions please see The IGWN Computing Guide.

Using graphics libraries on Linux¶

Low-latency graphics libraries (e.g. implementations of OpenGL) are not distributed as conda packages on Linux, and as such these are not included in the IGWN Conda Distribution environments.

Install graphics libraries separately

If your workflow requires rendering graphics, you are expected to install these low-level libraries yourself, or ask your friendly systems adminstrator to do that for you.

With most systems this just requires installing libGL.so, but more graphics-intensive workflows will likely require other libraries.

macOS comes batteries-included

macOS (at least macOS X) seems to come with the relevant graphics libraries pre-loaded.

Using LaTeX¶

The IGWN Conda Distribution does not provide (La)TeX, and in general there is not a usable TeX distribution available from conda-forge or Anaconda.

If you wish to use LaTeX alongside a Conda environment, you should install TeX using your system package manager, see below for details for some common operating systems:

Should be good enough for matplotlib

The following examples should get you far enough to use TeX with the Matplotlib Python library. If you find that other packages are needed, please open a Bug ticket.

Macports¶

port install \
    texlive \
    dvipng

Debian/Ubuntu¶

apt-get install \
    dvipng \
    texlive-latex-base \
    texlive-latex-extra

RHEL/Centos/Fedora¶

yum install \
    texlive-dvipng-bin \
    texlive-latex-bin-bin \
    texlive-type1cm \
    texlive-collection-fontsrecommended