CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonanacondacondavirtual-environment
Jeremy Matt
Jeremy Matt

Reputation: 729

Conda takes 20+ minutes to solve environment when package is already installed

When I type try to run conda update -n base conda, conda hung for around 20-minutes on 'Solving environment' and then returned a package plan that did not include an updated version of conda. The package plan that was returned is provided below.

NOTE: conda update --all solved the environment in a reasonable amount of time (~1 min - I didn't time it precisely).

Steps to Reproduce

conda update -n base conda

As I mentioned above, conda install websocket-client also hung at 'Solving environment' - I already had websocket-client version 0.53.0 installed when I tried to run the install command

Expected Behavior

Conda should either:

  1. If the most recent version is installed, conda should promptly inform the user that an update isn't needed.
  2. If a newer version is available, I'd expect Conda to solve the environment in a shorter period of time. I think that less than 1-2 minutes would be reasonable - 20+ minutes is too long

Originally posted here: https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/7938

Upvotes: 46

Views: 44761

Answers (4)

merv
merv

Reputation: 76750

A Common Problem: Suboptimal Channel Prioritization

Anaconda distribution is designed and tested to use the anaconda channel (a subset of defaults) as its primary channel. Adding conda-forge in either a higher- (channel_priority: strict) or equal-priority (channel_priority: flexible) configuration opens up many of the packages to be sourced from Conda Forge instead, and this is where Conda struggles to solve.

Including conda-forge both expands the search as well as opens other packages to be subject to channel switching, and since the anaconda package includes dozens of packages, this can be a huge satisfiability problem to solve. This is often most problematic after the first time conda-forge is added into a user's configuration.

Solutions

There are two high-level ways to improve performance: simplify the solving problem or use a faster solver. Of course, these are not mutually exclusive - feel free to be both thoughtful about what you demand of your solver and adopt optimized tools.

Option 1: Optimize Channel Prioritization

When the anaconda metapackage is installed in an environment, keep the defaults channel at highest priority (first channel in .condarc) and set channel_priority: strict. See the documentation on Managing Channels.

Additionally, one can forcefully prioritize the defaults channel with commands like

conda update -n base --override-channels -c defaults conda

Option 2: Mamba

Update: This option is mostly obsolete. Beginning with Conda v23.11, the libmamba solver is now default in conda, so unless an older Conda is being run, conda and mamba should have similar performance.

Mamba is a drop-in replacement for the conda CLI that is faster (compiled) and in my experience tends to be more aggressive in pruning. Once installed, it runs similar to conda, e.g.,

mamba update -n base conda

Note on Alternative Configuration

Many users find the coupling of their environment management infrastructure (Conda) to a large working environment (Anaconda) to be less than ideal. A popular alternative configuration is to maintain a minimal base environment, and if Anaconda is ever needed, to create a new environment with the anaconda package installed.

Alternative options for base environments include

  • Miniconda - minimal base with defaults channel priority
  • Miniforge - minimal base with conda-forge channel priority; also includes mamba

Upvotes: 31

Kevin
Kevin

Reputation: 26

For those of you who are having problems where the slow down is when it is collecting package metadata (e.g. repodata.json) does the experimental jlap option help? See the following blog post for more info.

https://conda.org/blog/2023-05-05-how-we-reduced-the-conda-index-fetch-bandwidth/

Upvotes: 0

Mike Battaglia
Mike Battaglia

Reputation: 385

A better answer for 2023, which is compatible with conda-forge: use the libmamba solver.

Conda is actually making this the default going forward, and things should be much faster.

Blog post: https://conda.org/blog/2023-07-05-conda-libmamba-solver-rollout/ Additional info: https://www.anaconda.com/blog/a-faster-conda-for-a-growing-community

To switch to the new solver, first do

conda update -n base conda

and then

conda install -n base conda-libmamba-solver
conda config --set solver libmamba

Upvotes: 4

sameer_nubia
sameer_nubia

Reputation: 811

Upgrade your conda For particular conda version

conda install conda=4.7.12

For latest conda version

conda update -n base -c defaults conda

Upvotes: -3

Related Questions