Explanation of different conda channels

Question

What are the major conda channels, and what are their focuses? I can't seem to find any documentation on what major channels are available and when to choose one over the other. What is the relationship to the "default" channel? How does one decide what order to put them in? In general, I use

• anaconda
• conda_forge
• r
• bioconda
• defaults

But I've been running into some problems with my environment breaking.

Answer 1

1. anaconda
2. conda-forge
3. r
4. bioconda

These are all channels from which packages can be installed. They are not anymore special than the default channel. You can even create your own channel on Anaconda Cloud to host packages.

What are the major conda channels, and what are their focuses? I can't seem to find any documentation on what major channels are available and when to choose one over the other.

Is there any specific conda package you want to install that is not available on the default channel. Then you can search for that package and see the channel on which it is hosted and likewise add that channel to install the package. Otherwise there is really no need to add other channels.

How does one decide what order to put them in?

The bioconda channel is a Conda channel providing bioinformatics related packages for Linux and Mac OS.. So if you require to use bioinformatics packages then you could rank it higher. As for the other channels such as conda-forge it is not special from any of the other thousands of channels on which packages are hosted. If you frequently download packages that are hosted on conda-forge but not on defaults then you can give it a higher priority. Otherwise there might not even be a need for the conda-forge channel.