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by _3sno 2028 days ago
My understanding is mamba, like conda, just call pip. So it likely wouldn't make a difference.

The pip section in a env file is just a list of arguments passed through to the pip install command. Prior to pip 20.3 we had to add `--use-feature=2020-resolver` to get an install that resolved for our teams that used mamba.

2 comments

Mamba and conda do not call pip.

You can install a pip package inside a conda environment. But when running `mamba install` or `conda install`, pip is not involved at all.

I got a bit confused by the statements in the thread. If the issue is downloading wheels to check dependencies, mamba should be a better alternative, as not only it is downloading packages in parallel but it uses a different dependency solver.
No, conda is not calling pip
You're wrong, it does.

Conda installs conda packages and conda uses pip to install pip packages. However a pip package can be converted to a conda package, and then in that case the dependency will be installed by conda and not pip.

You're wrong, it does not.

You can install a pip package in a conda env. But this is actually not recommended.

When using `mamba install` or `conda install`, pip is not involved at all.

You’re correct, Conda does not call pip when it installs packages. But pip does have a subtle involvement here: Many Python packages available to Conda are packaged based on installations made by pip, and (IMO lazily and incorrectly) inherits a lot of pip characteristics. This makes the packages “appear” to be installed by pip, and sometimes induce interpolation inconsistencies.