Mambaforge – Package Management

One of the biggest features of Mambaforge is the ability to search and install packages from either a central or an exteral repository. Additionally, package management in Mambaforge is specifically designed to integrate with isolated environments. This page goes over the basics of searching and installing packages with the mamba command.

We also have anaconda3 available as a module, but we have deliberately chosen Mambaforge for use within our documentation due to the ability to be a drop-in replacement for Anaconda and for the major improvements listed on the mamba Github page, particularly the parallel downloads and faster dependency solving.

More information on conda/mamba package management can be found on the Conda documentation page. While the main command on that page uses the conda command, you can replace it with mamba and expect the same results.

Prerequisites

In order to install mamba packages, you must first load the mambaforge module and activate a conda environment. Read our Mambaforge – Environments documentation page to learn how to do that.

Note: If a user-created conda environment is not activated, the base conda environment located at /packages/mambaforge/[latest_date] will be used instead. This directory is not writable by regular users, so package installation will fail.

Searching for Packages

To see if a certain package is available, use the mamba search command:

mamba search [package_name]

For example, to search for the term ninja, a mamba search command would look like:

mamba search ninja

Installing Packages

To install a specific package, use the mamba install command:

mamba install [package_name] [(optional) more_packages]

For example, to install the ninja package, a mamba install command would look like:

mamba install ninja

You can also specify a specific version of a package to install:

mamba install ninja=1.8.2

Additionally, you can also install multiple packages at once:

mamba install ninja=1.8.2 pandas

Software Channels

Channels in mamba are the repositories that a given package is downloaded from. Mamba has some channels configured by default, which you can see with the conda config command:

$ conda config --show channels
channels:
  - defaults

Note: The conda config command is not provided by mamba, so the conda command must be used. However, the mambaforge module provides the conda command, so no additional modules need to be loaded.

To install software from a channel not listed above, you can use the -c flag when using the mamba install command. For example, to install the zstd package, use the following command:

mamba install -c conda-forge zstd

Updating Packages

To update a package, use the mamba update command:

mamba update [package_name] [(optional) more_packages]

For example, to update the ninja package, a mamba update command would look like:

mamba update ninja

You can also update multiple packages at once:

mamba update ninja pandas

Removing Packages

To remove a specific package, use the mamba remove command:

mamba remove [package_name] [(optional) more_packages]

Note: This will uninstall the specifed packages in the currently active environment.

For example, to remove the ninja package, a mamba remove command would look like:

mamba remove ninja

You can also remove multiple packages at once

mamba remove ninja pandas

You can also remove a package from a specific conda environment:

mamba remove -n demo_environment ninja pandas