On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:

On Apr 14, 2016 11:11 AM, "Benjamin Root" <ben.v.root@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Are we going to have to have documentation somewhere making it clear that the numpy wheel shouldn't be used in a conda environment? Not that I would expect this issue to come up all that often, but I could imagine a scenario where a non-scientist is simply using a base conda distribution because that is what IT put on their system. Then they do "pip install ipython" that indirectly brings in numpy (through the matplotlib dependency), and end up with an incompatible numpy because they would have been linked against different pythons?
>
> Or is this not an issue?

There are always issues when you have two different package managers maintaining separate and out-of-sync metadata about what they think is installed, but that's true for any mixed use of conda and pip.

But:
- pip won't install a numpy that is incompatible with your python, unless Anaconda is actively breaking cpython's standard abi (they aren't) or there's a bug in pip (possible, but no reports yet).
- conda packages for python packages like numpy do generally include the .egg-info / .dist-info directories that pip uses to store its installation metadata, so pip can "see" packages installed by conda (but not vice-versa). So "pip install matplotlib" won't drag in a pypi numpy if there's already a conda numpy installed.

Minor clarification:. I believe conda can see pip-installed packages. 

If I execute "conda list" in an environment, I can see packaged installed by both pip, conda, and locally (i.e., "pip install . -e").

-paul