Support for "conda-devenv" extension

First of all, I’d like to thank you guys for this awesome project! 🚀

Background

The conda-devenv extension adds the ability to work with multiple projects in development mode, by processing environment.devenv.yml files, similar to regular environment.yml files, with features like Jinja2 templating, files inclusion, and environment variables.

https://github.com/ESSS/conda-devenv

Scenario

Environment devenv files are parsed incorrectly and the action throws an error.

# .github/workflows/simple-workflow.yml
  ...
  with:
    activate-environment: ${{ steps.configure.outputs.env-name }}
    environment-file: ${{ steps.configure.outputs.env-file }}
    python-version: ${{ steps.detect-version.outputs.version }}
  ...

# environment.devenv.yml
name: a-simple-service
dependencies:
  - gcc_linux-64 # [linux]
includes:
  - environment.yml

# environment.yml
name: a-simple-service
channels:
  - conda-forge
  - defaults
dependencies:
  - mypy
  - pip
  - python=3.8.5
  - pytest

The error

The response of the action setup is next:

> Updating 'a-simple-service' env from conda env update...
  /usr/share/miniconda/condabin/conda env update --name a-simple-service --file a-simple-service/environment.devenv.yml
  /home/runner/work/_actions/conda-incubator/setup-miniconda/v2/dist/setup/index.js:8193
                              throw new Error(`"${command}" failed with "${forced_error}"`);
                              ^
  
  Error: "/usr/share/miniconda/condabin/conda,env,update,--name,a-simple-service,--file,a-simple-service/environment.devenv.yml" failed with "EnvironmentSectionNotValid"
      at Object.stdout (/home/runner/work/_actions/conda-incubator/setup-miniconda/v2/dist/setup/index.js:8193:35)
      at Socket.<anonymous> (/home/runner/work/_actions/conda-incubator/setup-miniconda/v2/dist/setup/index.js:823:52)
      at Socket.emit (events.js:210:5)
      at addChunk (_stream_readable.js:309:12)
      at readableAddChunk (_stream_readable.js:290:11)
      at Socket.Readable.push (_stream_readable.js:224:10)
      at Pipe.onStreamRead (internal/stream_base_commons.js:182:23)

Thank you very much!

[bollwyvl]

A reproducer would help, but there’s an example of using base directly (which is probably appropriate in this case) in the docs.

- uses: conda-incubator/setup-miniconda@v2
  with:
    auto-activate-base: true
    activate-environment: ""

I don’t remember if that will work with environment-file, but probably does.

[bollwyvl]

I think the previous suggestion is the path forward for us here (use setup-miniconda, then insert-your-tool-here). This clearly separates the problem of “get non-ancient conda” from “do stuff (with conda)”… And would allow you to swap out for, say provision-micromamva

If you can lobby conda+mamba to support your file format (good luck) I’m all for it!

nox, anaconda-project, etc. have all been used successfully with this action, and with infinite maintainer time, I could imagine supporting all of them… But as that isn’t the case…