Anaconda not updating packages synchronously. Equality Pin?

[mrocklin]

Quick note, Anaconda isn't publishing dask and distributed packages synchronously ContinuumIO/anaconda-issues#12447

This encourages us to use equality pinning more strictly I think. I think that is someone does conda install dask today with only defaults then they get a non-working installation.

[jameslamb]

+1, we have been struggling with this in LightGBM's CI for a while now.

I've been doing a lot of investigation of this, see for example microsoft/LightGBM#4307 (comment)

I didn't know about ContinuumIO/anaconda-issues, thanks for that link! When I brought up this problem in dask/distributed#4819, a user group handle was linked to but noone in that handle responded: dask/distributed#4819 (comment).

[martindurant]

Note that dask and distributed are included in the Anaconda "individual edition" downloader, so the number of people installing dask from defaults is probably somewhat less than you might think.
I agree with equality pinning anyway!

[jrbourbeau]

This encourages us to use equality pinning more strictly I think

For reference, we've been using equality pinning for the last couple of dask and distributed releases to ensure users get working installations

[jakirkham]

cc @anaconda-pkg-build

[jameslamb]

It looks like conda packages dask, dask-core, and distributed 2021.5.1 were all published today:

• distributed: https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/linux-64/
• dask-core: https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch/
• dask: https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch/

However, it seems dask 2021.5.0 was skipped (dask-core and distributed 2021.5.0 were published to those channels).

To test:

docker run \
    --env CONDA_ENV=base \
    -it continuumio/miniconda3 \
    /bin/bash \
        -c "conda install -q -y -n base dask=2021.5.0"

which produces the following:

PackagesNotFoundError: The following packages are not available from current channels:

  - dask=2021.5.0

Current channels:

  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/linux-64
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/linux-64
  - https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch

[mrocklin]

cc @csoja (also thank you all for pushing the more recent versions. That should definitely stop a lot of the bleeding)