Using the MSYS2 tools to build conda packages

@mingwandroid has done an amazing job of packaging MSYS2 so that is works within conda. See his channel here. Also, see his comment about the work he has done and what still remains for more details.

Given how this greatly reduces the gap between Windows and the *NIXes, this makes Windows packaging very accessible to *NIX devs. This should not be undervalued as it has the potential to really increase our bandwidth on Windows by basically the size of our community. Packages that couldn’t be built due to CMake files missing or other problems also dissolve away. This has the potential to substantially reduce the effort required to get a package working on all platforms, which makes us more likely to do exactly that.

Also, it has the potential to free this quite painful constraint of compiler and CPython version. That has raised such issues as making custom patched versions of CPython ( https://github.com/conda-forge/conda-forge.github.io/issues/64 ) just to have C++11 features when using Python 2.7. Further this can free us from thinking about VC features entirely, which have had various issues.

It is honestly making me seriously considering switching to MSYS2 with everything.

Would be very curious to hear perspectives from a wide range of people on this. Please feel free to share your thoughts and also bring other people over that I have missed. I have put this on our docket for next weeks meeting.

cc @ocefpaf @pelson @ChrisBarker-NOAA @patricksnape @gillins @msarahan @mcg1969 @isuruf @ngoldbaum @ukoethe @jasongrout @SylvainCorlay

[ukoethe]

@njsmith

unfortunately, a Python distribution for Windows that can neither build nor use pypi wheels is unlikely to see much uptake

I don’t think so. If you want to do serious scientific computing in Windows, pypi is just not good enough, and I’m skeptical that its design can be fixed. conda is the only package manager on Windows whose approach is sufficiently powerful to make this work (although it’s still quite a way to go). If conda lives up to our expectations, I believe it will replace pypi on Windows entirely. So, let’s make conda and conda-forge as good as possible and not constrain ourselves by upstream’s prejudice.

[mingwandroid]

I expect to add all of the build tools as a matter of priority. So far only those needed for R have been added.