What's the best way of keeping Miniforge up to date?

[gernophil]

I know this question hast been asked a lot and you are probably annoyed by it. But what is the best way of keeping Miniforge up to date?

The command I read mostly nowadays is:

mamba update --all

But there is also:

mamba update mamba
mamba update --all

Earlier there was:

(conda update conda)
conda update --all)

1. I guess the outcome of the conda command would be equivalent to the mamba command, am I correct?
2. But what is the use of updating mamba or conda, before updating --all?

Besides that there is also the -u flag of the installer:

-u           update an existing installation

3. What's the use of that and what are the differences in outcome of updating using the installer?

I always do a fresh reinstall after uninstalling once in a while, but that's always a little time consuming since I also have to do all the config stuff. This is of course doable, but it would be nice, if there was one official way of keeping conda up to date.

Also for this I have some questions:

4. What would be the difference in outcome of a fresh reinstall vs. the -u way vs. the mamba update --all way?
5. And what is the preferred way?

I also feel it would be great, if the one official way would be mentioned in the docs.

Thanks for elaborating :).

[hmaarrfk]

1. I guess the outcome of the conda command would be equivalent to the mamba command, am I correct?

conda and mamba are not 100% equivalent. Sometimes there are slight differences, but for update and install in 2024, they should be mostly equivalent. conda vs mamba is a little bit like chasing the latest tooling. It used to be that conda was nearly necessary to handle the packaging metadata from conda-forge, but today, with libmamba-solver, conda should be just as usable as mamba. The problem is that if you try to update an environment with a REALLY OLD conda you might not have libmamba-sovler installed.

2. But what is the use of updating mamba or conda, before updating --all?

sometimes there are bugs in mamba that cause mamba update --all to fail.

3. What's the use of that and what are the differences in outcome of updating using the installer?

You really only need the installer the very first time. Once conda is installed, you can simply use conda update.

4. What would be the difference in outcome of a fresh reinstall vs. the -u way vs. the mamba update --all way?

Not accumulating packages accidentally.

5. And what is the preferred way?

I do:

• Keep my base env as clean as possible.
• mamba update --all --yes on a weekly basis.

I also feel it would be great, if the one official way would be mentioned in the docs.

I think we could add

conda update conda
conda update --all

to our instructions in the Installation section.

PRs welcome to add them to the docs.

[gernophil]

Thanks for your reply. That really helped me understanding the differences. Two more questions.

1. Would it matter, if my base is activated before I mamba update --all or would it also activate base, if I have no env active?
2. Would mamba update --all also update the base Python once in a while or would that always be pinned at the version you installed originally?

[hmaarrfk]

1. I'm not sure "not having an environment active" is a supported mode of operation. If things "work" don't count on them continuing to work.

Ensure that the environment you want to update is "activated"

2. When you type mamba update --all you will see the output:

Pinned packages:
  - python 3.10.*

which states that python will not be updated to anything other than 3.10.*