Why does conda install pip/setuptools etc…?

Question

I am using conda to create clean environments for each my my python projects. I'd like to bootstrap the environmetn with only python, and not muddy it up wtih dependencies that aren't necessary. I noticed that when creating a barebones venv with anaconda:

conda create --name myenv python

It must install the following new packages,

certifi:        2017.11.5-py36hb8ac631_0
pip:            9.0.1-py36h226ae91_4
python:         3.6.3-h3b118a2_4
setuptools:     36.5.0-py36h65f9e6e_0
vc:             14-h2379b0c_2
vs2015_runtime: 14.0.25123-hd4c4e62_2
wheel:          0.30.0-py36h6c3ec14_1
wincertstore:   0.2-py36h7fe50ca_0

Does conda require these in some sense to operate? Can they be kept out of the installation if one only plans to use the python standard library?

Answer 1

Then don't run them. The point of these dependencies are that you can't extend your environment with any third party libraries unless they are present, and most projects do depend on some third party libraries (or that your own library should be installable) - so they're installed by default, since they're usually required and useful.

You can ask the conda venv create script to not include any default packages with --no-default-packages and --no-deps . The official virtualenv package supports --no-pip , --no-setuptools and --no-wheel to skip them.