Does conda env support development dependencies?

Question

Does conda allow you to install a dependency into an environment as a development dependency?

I'm thinking of something like how bower does this with --save-dev

Answer 1

AFAICT, no, it does not. This repo represents work around options that might be useful elsewhere:

• https://github.com/dazza-codes/conda_container

In short, it supplements a conda install with subsequent pip installs from a requirements.txt and/or a requirements.dev file. Since there can be inconsistencies in conda vs. pip packages (like different name variants etc.), there are use cases for having a combination of conda and pip. Also conda can support a pip array in an environment.yml file but the version specs for conda vs. pip packages are not compatible. Liberal use of pip check is recommended for any combination of packages from different packaging systems.