Pixi

Pixi is an innovative package manager designed for the conda ecosystem, developed in Rust. It aims to simplify the management of dependencies and the creation of reproducible development environments across multiple platforms and programming languages. Drawing inspiration from modern package managers like Cargo, Poetry, and Yarn, Pixi provides a fast, user-friendly experience while maintaining the robustness of the conda ecosystem.

Pixi leverages the open-source conda library, rattler, to offer a familiar CLI experience. It supports automatic cross-platform lock-file generation, a cross-platform task system, and the ability to globally install tools. Unlike traditional conda environments, Pixi's environments are project-specific, eliminating the need for explicit environment activation.

The tool is straightforward to install with a single command and does not require a base environment or Python. Pixi’s configuration is scoped to individual projects, facilitating easier sharing and collaboration. Its compatibility with multiple languages within a single project, including Python, C++, Rust, Fortran, and R, makes it a versatile tool for diverse development needs.

Pixi builds on the strengths of the conda ecosystem, such as its focus on reproducibility and strong community support. Future enhancements include building conda packages directly from Pixi, integrating with the PyPI ecosystem, and providing CI workflows. The project is open-source and available on GitHub, with extensive documentation and a community Discord server for support and feedback.