Miniconda 23.11.0

We are happy to announce the release of Miniconda 23.11.0 which is powered with conda v23.11.0 and includes Python versions 3.11.5, 3.10.13, 3.9.18, 3.8.18. Release notes are here. This marks the final release for Python 3.8, signifying a significant milestone for our team. The highlight of this release is the implementation of our new automated build, test, and release pipeline.

Previously, the process of building and releasing installers was a labor-intensive and time-consuming manual task. Approximately a year ago, individual installers were constructed and signed on Concourse and personal laptops. The quality assurance (QA) process was manual, spanning a week, with undocumented tests. Installers were manually uploaded, leading to additional complexity and delay.

Since then, we’ve made substantial improvements:

  • Synchronized our codebase with open-source community-supported projects such as constructor or conda-standalone, introducing new features and addressing critical security vulnerabilities.
  • Implemented an automated build workflow utilizing GitHub Actions for building and signing installers (details in our milestone announcement).
  • Automated documentation generation, including release notes (refer to our milestone announcement).
  • Established a fully automated and documented test suite executed with each release, significantly reducing the reliance on manual QA.
  • Deployed the test suite for manual QA automatically with each release, with all tests documented on GitHub.
  • Developed a framework to directly upload installers from GitHub to repo.anaconda.com, completely removing humans from the build and upload stages.

This streamlined approach is expected to substantially expedite future installer builds and enhance the overall reliability of our installers. news about Anaconda software releases, events, and news