Native Packages (RPM/DEB)

Native packages are built in containers. The build uses a self-extracting installer to materialize the environment inside the container before packaging it.

Build Behavior

• Installers are prepared for the requested platforms.
• A per-platform package_plan.tsv describes which native packages to build and where their payloads and metadata live in the packaging workspace.
• The packaging container receives the installer, the package plan, and an output directory via bind mounts.
• Inside the container, the packaging script installs the environment via the installer.
• Inside the container, the script runs rpmbuild or dpkg-deb and writes artifacts to the output directory.

split_deps = false (Single Package)

When split_deps is disabled:

• The base package contains the full environment payload.
• No per-dependency subpackages are generated.
• The resulting RPM/DEB is self-contained.

split_deps = true (One Package per Conda Package)

When split_deps is enabled:

• The base package is a metapackage with no payload.
• One dependency package is created per conda package, containing only that package’s files.
• For Python noarch packages, the native package release is suffixed with the Python major/minor version (for example py311) so builds against different interpreters remain distinct.

To ensure dependency packages are only installed alongside the base metapackage, conda-dist encodes a dependency cycle:

• The base package depends on each dependency package with exact version+build pins and provides lock-<package> for each dependency.
• Each dependency package depends on its corresponding lock-<package> virtual provide.

This makes the base package act as the lockfile while still allowing the environment to be split into native packages.

Example dependency cycle (environment name: my-app):

my-app (metapackage)
  Depends: my-app-numpy (= 1.26.4-0), my-app-python (= 3.12.1-0), ...
  Provides: lock-my-app-numpy, lock-my-app-python, ...

my-app-numpy
  Depends: lock-my-app-numpy

my-app-python
  Depends: lock-my-app-python