Anaconda: Where and how to install a non-distribution package to support a flask-wtf conda recipe?

Question

I'm trying with little success to build and install conda packages in for envs in the Anaconda python distribution. Right now I'm trying to build a package for flask-wtf. I copied the .bat, .sh, and .yaml recipe files from Continuum IO's recipe. The files are in a directory named flask-wtf on my desktop, and I ran conda build flask-wtf on it. It returned the message: Error: No packages found matching: wtforms. I do not have wtforms installed anywhere, so now I have two questions:

1) If I install wtforms do I have to install it globally, or can I keep it in the relevant conda env? 2) If I install wtforms from a tarball do I have to keep that tarball file around for later installs into other envs?

Thanks for your help and clarification!

Answer 1

The only way that conda build will see dependencies is if they also exist as conda packages. So you need to build the conda package for wtforms as well. Fortunately, the recipe for this exists in the conda-recipes as well, so you can just clone that repo and do

conda build wtforms
conda build flask

This works because conda is able to find the packages that it has already built. To make sure that they don't get lost if you delete the build directory, it's recommended to upload your packages to Binstar. If you do that and conda install binstar, after you build, it will ask you if you want to upload the package to binstar. If you do that, and also add your Binstar repo to your .condarc, those packages will always be available for you to conda install.