A python dependency manager manager manager. Truly we live in an age of unprecedented code abstraction and complexity. And I love that you install and manage wetlands itself with pip. An ouroboros matrioska of code.
Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
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Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#12The fact that this exists shows that there is a serious problem in the python ecosystem. I'm sure it solves a real problem, so I'm not knocking the author. It's more of a "state of our industry" problem.
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#13The fact that this exists shows that there is a serious problem in the python ecosystem. I'm sure it solves a real problem, so I'm not knocking the author. It's more of a "state of our industry" problem.
I maintain there is no issue. It's really not hard. conda is a smell for me though.
pyenv is all you need. it manages python versions and python virtual environments. you can create and destroy them just as easily as git branches.
pyenv + good ol' requirements.txt is really all you need.
if your env dictates containers, it's even easier to work with. FROM python:version and done.
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#14Why do people use Conda instead of uv?
Conda manages binaries and their native dependencies together, including shared libraries[0]. This offers significant advantages over uv and pip when distributing packages with C extensions, such as dependency resolution that accounts for shared library requirements, and better package isolation.
[0]: https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda-build/en/latest/resourc...
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#15The fact that this exists shows that there is a serious problem in the python ecosystem. I'm sure it solves a real problem, so I'm not knocking the author. It's more of a "state of our industry" problem.
I maintain there is no issue. It's really not hard. conda is a smell for me though. pyenv is all you need. it manages python versions and python virtual environments. you can create and destroy them just as easily as git branches. pyenv + good ol' requirements.txt is really all you need. if your env dictates containers, it's even easier to work with. FROM python:version and done.
The issue is you think pyenv has solved everything, someone else thinks poetry solves everything, I think uv solves everything, and someone else is apt installing things. And then there is installing torch and cuda...
I think having a very widely accepted and supported default would let the community rally around it and improve the experience and documentation (though I am not a fan of the centralized hosting that npm and cargo push, I much prefer the go approach, but we are already there with PyPI)
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#16Why do people use Conda instead of uv?
Conda manages binaries and their native dependencies together, including shared libraries[0]. This offers significant advantages over uv and pip when distributing packages with C extensions, such as dependency resolution that accounts for shared library requirements, and better package isolation. [0]: https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda-build/en/latest/resourc...
Use PDM with the UV backend - this accomplishes this in a much more lightweight and performant way.
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#17> Wetlands not only simplifies the creation of isolated Conda environments with specific dependencies, but also allows you to run I've been using Conda for 10 years as my default package manager on my devices (not pipenv or poetry etc). I started because it was "the way" for data science but I kept with it because the syntax is really intuitive to me (conda create, conda activate). I'm not sure what problem you are s…
I used to use conda, but have switched entirely to uv now
As someone new to Python: what was ever the appeal of conda that uv doesn't satisfy?
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to use conda, but have switched entirely to uv now
As someone new to Python: what was ever the appeal of conda that uv doesn't satisfy?
conda doesn't just package python libraries, but also the C/Fortran/other bits that the scipy stack often depended on. With the rise of binary wheels that is less needed though
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I maintain there is no issue. It's really not hard. conda is a smell for me though. pyenv is all you need. it manages python versions and python virtual environments. you can create and destroy them just as easily as git branches. pyenv + good ol' requirements.txt is really all you need. if your env dictates containers, it's even easier to work with. FROM python:version and done.
The issue is you think pyenv has solved everything, someone else thinks poetry solves everything, I think uv solves everything, and someone else is apt installing things. And then there is installing torch and cuda... I think having a very widely accepted and supported default would let the community rally around it and improve the experience and documentation (though I am not a fan of the centralized hosting that np…
uv + poetry are a higher level in the stack than something like pyenv.
pip, uv, poetry are all analagous. they ensure the correct packages are installed. we have some internal apps that devs decided to start with poetry and it has some nice ergonomics ... but on the other hand I find the simplicity of a requirements file to be so ... simple. People get caught up on the file, too, but really its just a convention. you can call it whatever you want, deps.txt, deps.foo, packages.bar ... its just a plaintext file with newline delimited packages. since its "just a file" and "just unix" this has the added perk of being able to cat many files together and use that with pip. it's all just lines of text, pip does not care.
pyenv + pip works. pyenv + poetry works. pyenv + uv works. those become inconsequential decisions you can make on a case by case basis and try or forget as needed.
Re: Show HN: Wetlands – a lightweight Python library for managing Conda environments
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conda manages binaries and their native dependencies together, including shared libraries[0]. This offers significant advantages over uv and pip when distributing packages with C extensions, such as dependency resolution that accounts for shared library requirements, and better package isolation. [0]: https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda-build/en/latest/resourc...
Use PDM with the UV backend - this accomplishes this in a much more lightweight and performant way.
Does PDM manage C/Fortran library dependencies? IIRC conda was the only solution for managing both native and python dependencies but I haven't really looked elsewhere.
With wheels and the manylinux specifications there's less of a usecase for that, but still could be useful