Mamba and Conda... again!

[peanutfun]

Conda has actually switched to the libmamba solver as of October 2023. This means that there should be practically no difference in environment solving and the associated timings between Conda and Mamba. The inconsistencies and solver errors we often faced might actually have been the result of using both the defaults and the conda-forge channels simultaneously, although they are considered incompatible. This was reported in #843 and is now thankfully fixed.

Currently everything works fine, but I am starting this discussion to keep track of the development over at Mamba. In particular, there is a discussion if Mamba should be deprecated in favor of Conda and Micromamba, see mamba-org/mamba#3054. To summarize the discussion as of 2024-02-21:

• Mamba and Conda now use the same solver but show some inconsistencies in CLI usage. Having only one option might reduce confusion among users.
• The proper lightweight alternative to Conda is Micromamba, not Mamba.

[peanutfun]

How to switch back to Conda:

• Replace all mamba commands with conda in the installation instructions
• Tell users to install Conda. They can choose between Miniconda and Anaconda, see https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/stable/user-guide/install/index.html (edit: Miniforge for conda/mamba is also fine)
• Add conda-forge as highest-priority channel following these instructions: https://conda-forge.org/docs/user/introduction/#how-can-i-install-packages-from-conda-forge

@chahank

[chahank]

Thanks, I can prepare a PR to update the installation.

[chahank]

Starting working on the branch feature/installation_back_to_conda. It is in progress. Any inputs are welcome.

[bguillod]

What is the status there - this has not yet been merged and is not part of the most recent release (5.0.0), correct?

[peanutfun]

@bguillod Correct. We are currently facing some issues with Conda again, which might postpone us switching back. See #913