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Creating custom installers with Constructor

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Overview and Installation:

Constructor is a tool which allows constructing an installer for a collection of conda packages. Basically, it creates an Anaconda-like installer consisting of conda packages. This tool was previously proprietary and known as cas-installer. You can install constructor using conda like:

conda install constructor constructor -h


The constructor command takes an installer specification directory as its argument. This directory needs to contain a file construct.yaml, which specifies the name of the installer, the conda channels to pull packages from, the conda packages included in the installer etc. The complete list of keys in this file can be found in CONSTRUCT.md . Also, the directory may contain some additional optional files such as a license file, and image files for the Windows installer.

An Example construct.yaml File:

In this example you will see a few of the common keys such as name (required), version (required), channels, specs, exclude and a few others like the key for license_file and welcome_image. You will also notice that certain packages in specs are specified for only specific platforms - UNIX, Win.

name: Maxiconda
version: 2.5.5
install_in_dependency_order: True
channels:
  - http://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/
specs:

  - python 3.5*
  - conda
  - nomkl       [not win]
  - numpy
  - scipy

  - pandas
  - notebook
  - matplotlib
  - lighttpd       [unix]

exclude:
  - qt
  - sip
  - pyqt
license_file: EULA.txt

# Welcome image for Windows installer
welcome_image: photo.png [win]


In order to create your custom installer, create a directory with your construct.yaml file inside as well as any other necessary files (EULA.txt, photo.png, etc). While inside the directory run this command:

constructor .

Your installer will be created inside of the directory with this naming scheme: name-version-yourPlatform.sh/exe. 

Some Additional Considerations:

  • Constructor does not work with noarch-Python packages. All conda packages must be available for the platform you are building the installer for.
  • An installer created by constructor does not need to include conda itself. If you require the ability to use conda after installation, add conda to the package list.
  • An installer created by constructor is not the same as Miniconda. All packages you want to include in the installer need to be listed explicitly. In particular, on Windows this means that if you want the "Anaconda Prompt", you will have to list console_shortcut, as well as menuinst.
  • For Windows builds, add the Continuum channels /free and /msys2 to the file constructor.yaml. This provides packages such as m2w64-toolchain which is a dependency of theano. It is best to add /msys2 ashttp://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/msys2.

 

 

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