List of well-maintained `conda` channels

Question

conda takes the -c argument to specify which channel to install packages from.

Apart from the default channel, are all other channels a flat mess of user-created content, or are some channels widely regarded as professionally maintained and robust?

Is the intel channel actually from the chip manufacturer, or can any old Joe Bloggs create a channel called intel?

anaconda.org seems to list user-created channels without any kind of recommendations as to purpose or quality.

Where can I find a curated lists of channels?

• Which are commonly well regarded (and why)
• Which channels serve which purposes
• New / interesting channels

Answer 1

In my experience, the two largest and best-maintained channels are defaults and conda-forge. Conda Forge (who run the conda-forge channel) are also an organization that has governance, code of conduct, and other things that mark it as a well-run open-source project. It is also part of NumFOCUS, which is a non-profit in the US that supports open-source scientific software. (Disclaimer: I am also part of an organization that is under the NumFOCUS umbrella, and I maintain several packages for conda-forge, although I am not involved in any governance decisions for Conda Forge).

As far as I know, the intel channel is indeed maintained by the chip maker. Namespace squatting could certainly be a problem; I don't work for Anaconda Inc. so I don't know how they handle those cases.

As far as I know, there is not a curated list of channels. Packages where the maintainers use their own channel tend to list that in their install instructions, and some fields have their own channels (e.g., bioconda), so people in that field tend to know about that channel.