Conda-based Installer Parent Issue

This issue is intended to capture discussions related to the development of the conda-based standalone Spyder installers post release of Spyder 5.4.0.

This description will aim to capture the up-to-date status of the development strategy resulting from a consensus of comments. Bug fixes and explicit tasks should be reported in a separate issue and PR.

Outstanding Questions, Ideas, & Proposals

1. Update the Spyder conda installation as follows:
   • Make the root conda environment the Spyder runtime environment
   • Name the root conda environment directory spyder-X.X with major and minor version only
   • The root environment will support all bug fix releases within the minor release, and can be updated via conda-forge
   • New minor and major releases will require downloading a new installer.

[mrclary]

Another suggestion: Could we only build the Intel app in PRs for Mac? That should be enough, given that it can run on M1/M2 chips, right?

The thing is we only have 5 Mac slots for the entire organization, and right now we’re using more than that on every PR here, which slows down development in other projects.

Sure thing. I’ll remove arm64 from the build matrix.

[ccordoba12]

Another suggestion: Could we only build the Intel app in PRs for Mac? That should be enough, given that it can run on M1/M2 chips, right?

The thing is we only have 5 Mac slots for the entire organization, and right now we’re using more than that on every PR here, which slows down development in other projects.