Start article about the history of conda-forge #2298
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Great article @jaimergp! It felt like it ended with cliffhanger and make me want for more. Are you planning on part 2/∞? |
Yes! This is just the beginning, and not ready for publication yet. Was hoping to gather some interest here and get comments from the "old guard" while I cover the very beginnings. Then I'll need a looot of help with the 2016-2021 period, and after that I think I can recollect a few things. Even basic bullet items with a rough chronology would help so I can research git histories, archive.org, etc. |
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Here are some big events to track / mention. I don't have all of the details:
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There were several bots
Some other things to note
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| conda-forge's origins cannot be explained without understanding the context of Python packaging back in the early 2010s. Back then, the installation of Python packages across operating systems was very challenging, specially on Windows, as it often meant compiling dependencies from source. | ||
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| Python 2.x was the norm, the community was transitioning from `easy_install` to `pip`, and there wouldn't be an alternative for Python eggs [^eggs] until 2012, when wheels are introduced [^wheels]. To get Python, you'd get the official installers from Python.org, stick to the system provided one in Linux, or resort to ActiveState's or Enthought's distributions in macOS and Windows [^legacy-python-downloads]. |
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Python(x,y) was a popular Windows distribution back then, especially for science users. I recall it and Enthought's basically being the two main options for getting things working on Windows.
| Python 2.x was the norm, the community was transitioning from `easy_install` to `pip`, and there wouldn't be an alternative for Python eggs [^eggs] until 2012, when wheels are introduced [^wheels]. To get Python, you'd get the official installers from Python.org, stick to the system provided one in Linux, or resort to ActiveState's or Enthought's distributions in macOS and Windows [^legacy-python-downloads]. | |
| Python 2.x was the norm, the community was transitioning from `easy_install` to `pip`, and there wouldn't be an alternative for Python eggs [^eggs] until 2012, when wheels are introduced [^wheels]. To get Python, you'd get the official installers from Python.org, stick to the system provided one in Linux, or resort to options like ActiveState's or Enthought's distributions in macOS and Windows [^legacy-python-downloads]. |
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Added "options like" to not disregard Python(x,y) and others.
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I remember being in a birds of a feather session at SciPy around 2013 or 2014 where the momentum to make conda forge real seemed to solidify and it was very soon after that conference that it took material form. |
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The content is accurate as far as I can remember (which doesn't necessarily mean much). I would suggest doing a full checkup for grammar, and in particular, being consistent across the post with tense. |
It was 2015 that the BoF happened and the soft launch on 2016 if I'm not mistaken. |
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I would like it if there were a paragraph that mentions the deep collaborative period between Anaconda's default channel and conda-forge. Where we would often trade recipes collaboration was intricately linked. I really look back fondly at the times where I was learning alot from msarahan, mingwandroid, jcrist, mrocklin (not sure if he worked for Anaconda at the time). For me, the availability of Qt, Pillow, and OpenCV on windows/osx/linux were what brought me to Anaconda/conda/conda-forge. |
PR Checklist:
docs/orcommunity/, you have added it to the sidebar in the corresponding_sidebar.jsonfileStill work in progress, but I wanted to capture the momentum started by Wolf and Filipe's podcast episode.
Tagging some folks for awareness, visibility, and hopefully a review, comments or even contributions if they are feeling generous 🙏 @ocefpaf @jakirkham @pelson @dholth @bryevdv @msarahan @asmeurer @ilanschnell. Feel free to tag others as well if you feel they can add more context into the early days!
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