Publish A Python Package on Conda | Shuai Computational and Integrated Hydrology Group

This post will show the process of publish a python package on Anaconda, specifically on conda-forge. The steps mostly follows this post by Qiusheng Wu and the official guide.

Before you start, make sure you have created and published the python package on Pypi.

Create conda environment and install conda-install

In this example, we use pypackage as the environment name.

conda create --name pypackage python
conda activate pypackage
conda install conda-build
conda install grayskull

Download Pypi package locally

You can download the package from Pypi using:

pip download --no-deps --no-binary :all: <package_name>

This will download a tarball file (e.g., <package_name>-0.1.0.tar.gz) to the current working directory.

Create conda recipe

The only thing that’s needed for creating the conda package is a meta.yaml file. I will use the template provided by Conda-recipe.

To fill the meta.yaml file, we can use grayskull to generate a template based on the package on Pypi.

grayskull pypi <package_name>

Open the template and change the following fields:

package/name: the name of your package
package/version: the version of your package
source/url: the URL of the source code, usually the tarball link on Pypi
source/sha256: the sha256 checksum of the source code tarball. You can get it using sha256sum <package_name-xxx.tar.gz>
requirements/build: the build dependencies, usually python and pip
requirements/run: the runtime dependencies, usually the packages listed in requirements.txt on Github repo
license: the license of your package, e.g., MIT
license_file: the license file, e.g., LICENSE.txt

The rest of the fields can be left as default.

Add recipe to staged-recipes repo

Fork the staged-recipes repo
Clone the forked repo to your local machine
Create a new branch using git checkout -b add-<package_name>
Create a new folder under recipes with the same name as your package
Add the meta.yaml file to the new folder
Commit the changes using git commit -m "Add <package_name> recipe"
Push the changes to your forked repo using `git push origin add-<package_name
Create a pull request to the original staged-recipes repo

After your PR passes the review (make sure your ping using the comment “@conda-forge/help-python, ready for review!”), it will be merged to the main branch and your package will be built and uploaded to conda-forge automatically.

Test the package

You can create a new conda environment and install your package from conda-forge to test if it works.

conda create --name testenv python
conda activate testenv
conda install -c conda-forge <package_name>

Update the package

To update the package, you need to:

Update the version number in the meta.yaml file.
Update the source/url using the new version from Pypi.
Download the new tarball and update the source/url and source/sha256 fields in the meta.yaml file.
Commit the changes and push to your forked repo.
Create a pull request to the original staged-recipes repo.

Reference

Build conda package from scratch: https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda-build/en/stable/user-guide/tutorials/build-pkgs.html
How to publish a python package on conda-forge: https://blog.gishub.org/how-to-publish-a-python-package-on-conda-forge