The conda-forge project is one of the fastest growing Open Source communities out there – and most data scientists have probably heard of it. In this talk we explain the inner workings of conda-forge, its relationship to conda and PyPI, and we will explain how everyone can package software with conda-forge.
The conda-forge project offers binary packages for Linux, macOS and Windows. It has greatly simplified software distribution for millions of users. As a volunteer-run Open Source project with build instructions for a plethora of software packages that are most often used in the multidisciplinary community of scientific computing, conda-forge has seen an unprecedented growth, not the least because of the success of Python in that field.
In this talk we’ll take a look at the past, present and future of the project and showcase a number of projects in the overarching conda ecosystem that help with scaling conda-forge.
The talk will go into detail how the conda-forge project is maintained by volunteers and where collaboration between participating organizations is a key aspect of shaping its future.
We will also answer the question “Why not just use PyPI and the Python packaging stack?” and show how easy it is to create and submit packages to conda-forge.
