Dependences and Conda Packages

[petrasvestartas]

How do you distribute packages in Conda using nanobind?

Why I ask this question:

Nanobind is using CMakeLists it means you can download all the source code as C++ and compile instantly.
But it compiles just for your current computer architecture.
What is your experience to distribute packages over multiple architectures: win, mac, linux?

[wojdyr]

Like with any compiled program or extension: you have separate binaries for different systems.
For conda-forge, one prepares a recipe how to build a package and then it's all built somewhere in the cloud.

I'm currently maintaining one package, but without deeper understanding of how the conda infra works, so won't give it as an example. You can find many examples searching for "nanobind" in recipe/meta.yaml files, in org:conda-forge.

[petrasvestartas]

Since C++ code relies on external packages, do you recommend using Add_ExternalProject to download source files separately?

[petrasvestartas]

Do you think Conda is really needed to install 3rd party c++ libraries?
Or I could handle the external c++ libraries install while conda would only build different OS bindings?

[wojdyr]

The usual approach is to use nanobind package from conda-forge.
You add it to requirements in recipe/meta.yaml and that's all.

[petrasvestartas]

What do you mean?

For example I have a cgal dependency which is a wrapper I am writing, and which does not exist on conda forge

[wojdyr]

Sorry, I was thinking about nanobind.
I don't know what's the policy on dependencies in conda-forge.