Creating a development environment doesn't work as expected in doc

[s-celles]

Hello,

I need to create a development environment for Pandas ( #9154 (comment) )

So I try to follow https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/contributing.html#creating-a-development-environment

$ conda create -n pandas_dev python=3 --file ci/requirements_dev.txt
Fetching package metadata .........

PackageNotFoundError: Packages missing in current channels:

  - moto

We have searched for the packages in the following channels:

  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64
  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/noarch
  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/r/osx-64
  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/r/noarch
  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/pro/osx-64
  - https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/pro/noarch

Pinging @jorisvandenbossche

[s-celles]

I copied requirements_dev.txt to requirements_dev_py3.txt and removed moto
but this is maybe required

[jorisvandenbossche]

It's no problem for now (moto is only needed for testing, and only for certain tests), but we need to solve this in general.

I suppose this is only available from conda-forge? cc @TomAugspurger

[TomAugspurger]

Yeah. We should update the docs to recommend conda-forge I think.

[jorisvandenbossche]

Would there be another way to specify this?
(probably not with requirements.txt file? With environment.yml files I think you can specify the env?)

Because I don't fully like that we in that way somewhat enforce people to use the conda-forge channel (although I certainly recommend it as well), but there are still some incompatibilities between defaults and conda-forge.

[TomAugspurger]

Would there be another way to specify this?

Yes, the environment.yaml file can contain a channels section.

[TomAugspurger]

More generally, we should think through the purpose of the various requirements_* files. I see a few use-caes:

• Someone wants to build pandas locally, with just the minimal deps (just our required dependencies + Cython): requirements.txt
• Someone wants to contribute to the docs (all build deps + doc deps): requirements_docs.txt
• Someone wants to contribute to the codebase (all build deps + all test deps): requirements_test.txt
• Someone wants everything: requirements_all.txt

Do we one one environment file for each of those? Are there any other use-cases? Conda environments can't do recursive includes (like pip -r), but I think that having some repetition is fine.

[jreback]

an easy way out of this is to make *.txt pip only and specify a .yml for the conda installs

[htdinh]

Hello everyone, I am new contributor to Pandas. In short, what should I do to solve the same problem stated in the first post? Thank you.

[TomAugspurger]

conda create -n pandas_dev python=3 -c conda-forge --file ci/requirements_dev.txt should work for you.