How to install requirements for a target defined in meta.yaml

Question

I have meta.yaml which has a section looking a little bit like this:

requirements:
  build:
    - pylint 2.7.*
  run:
    - sqlalchemy 1.3.*

How can I install just requirements needed for build? Is there something like conda install --target build?

Answer 1

By default, building creates a temporary _build environment that gets deleted immediately after. There is a --bootstrap flag that let's one specify an existing environment, but I'm not sure that's helpful here. Instead, you likely want something like

conda-build --build-only --dirty RECIPE_PATH

which will run the build, creating the temporary _build environment, and skip the auto-deletion. You can then debug on that _build environment (activate by path).

See the conda-build command's documentation.