Anaconda is a software installation and management toolset, designed to exist alongside Python and other software made available by the operating system or other software provision methods.
It largely replicates the same functionality available from system tools such as yum, apt, dpkg and similar, as well as language level install tools like pip and gem and the curated software repositories such as CRAN or CPAN.
In most cases, the use of Anaconda is not strictly necessary - in almost every case the same can be achieved by other means, however it has become an easy to use option.
Anaconda is not free
Most users are not aware that the use of Anaconda and the Anaconda software repositories is not entirely free. In particular, access to the software repositories which Anaconda uses, out of the box, in a default configuration are subject to per-user, per-month license fees, if the user, their employer and the use of the software does not meet the licensing conditions Anaconda Inc. stipulate.
To be clear, no new installation of Anaconda on our HPC facilities is permitted.
Whilst the use of Anaconda in the research computing world has traditionally been extensive, recent licensing and litigation issues raised in 2024 amongst the UK FE/HE community have lead us to consider the licensing situation of Anaconda on our HPC systems as too much of a risk. Most other UK Universities are taking the same route, with the software either being heavily restricted or fully removed.
For a summary of the troublesome licensing situation with Anaconda, see these articles:
Anaconda Inc. released an updated licensing statement after these issues surfaced:
However, the updated statement still leaves the situation unclear, and on a shared-use system like our HPC facilities, this leaves the risk that some users may not be in compliance with their updated terms. The legal impact of this affects the entire University (since we have significantly more than 200 employees).
For this reason, the Newcastle University HPC Steering group, along with our Cyber Security and Licensing experts have determined that Anaconda must not be used on Comet.
The Comet HPC facility will not be making Anaconda available, and all existing Anaconda users will be contacted to make them aware that any Anaconda installations must be removed as part of the migration to the new platform.
Warning
Do not attempt to install Anaconda yourself in your HOME or NOBACKUP areas.
The tools available from conda-forge are largely identical to those from Anaconda Inc., with the main difference being that the software repositories the conda-forge tool uses are community supported and thus free from the licensing restrictions present in the repositories provided by Anaconda Inc.
The tools from conda-forge are available on Comet as a loadable module:
$ module load condaforge
The conda command provided by conda-forge functions identically to the same command provided by Anaconda Inc. In most circumstances you should be able to replicate any previous Anaconda environments using the conda-forge equivalents.
There may be some cases where a software package or toolchain is not present in the community conda-forge repositories. If you encounter this issue, please contact the RSE team, and we may be able to arrange for that package to be provided by some alternative method.
Warning!
Do not attempt to change the software repository settings of conda-forge to use the license-restricted Anaconda repositories. Any attempt to do so will be seen as possible circumventing of University software licensing policy. At a minimum this will result in the suspension of your HPC Project account, but could also result in further action being taken.
Whilst there is no automatic means to upgrade an Anaconda environment to one managed by conda-forge, there are community provided guides on the steps needed to migrate an existing environment to one which is provisioned by the conda-forge software repositories instead: