Conda [/Mamba] Installation Channel Priority Strict Error

[erfanshekarriz]

Hello and hope all is well.

I wanted to report that the conda installation only works when setting channel priorities as flexible conda config --set channel_priority flexible, but does not work when set to strict.

This can be a huge future problem with reproducibility since the flexible mode can arbitrarily take any version of any software from the channels you've set (and you have around 6 set which is also lots to handle).

I found out about this problem when failing to install PhaBox on a second server without noticing that my original server was accidentally set to flexible mode while the new server was correctly set to strict.

I would highly recommend seeing if a conda recipe with strict channel priorities can be set as with flexible mode there is no guarantee of reproducibility [even for yourself] on different systems, which doesn't go well with the fact that conda recipes are usually made for reproducibility.

For anyone struggling with installations, I recommend running conda config --set channel_priority flexible and then back to conda config --set channel_priority strict upon installation.

I've attached a sample error file to see the conflicts it causes.
error.txt

Hope this helps.

Best,

Erfan