Starting with conda-smithy 3.53.4, the build scripts will no longer use the system macOS SDK directory by default. The CI systems will use a dedicated /opt/conda-sdks directory, while users performing local builds will need to choose a writable directory, and provide the path to it via OSX_SDK_DIR environment variable.

This change may result in some build systems, particularly CMake, storing paths to this temporary build directory in installed metadata. Feedstocks will need to substitute the stored paths with path-agnostic solutions (for example, see substitutions in openpmd-api-feedstock) or the correct sysroot paths (for example, see substitutions in cartographer-feedstock.

We have made the conda-forge Discourse forum read-only. Please use the conda-forge Zulip chat instead.

With Python 3.9 reaching end-of-life in Oct 2025 and Python 3.14 being released the same month, we have decided to drop 3.9 from our default build matrix. This will be reflected in your feedstock configuration on the next rerender. The decision to drop support 1.5 months before its EOL is to avoid the strain on conda-forge CI while we add support for 3.14.

conda-forge by default uses OpenBLAS as its BLAS and LAPACK provider on macOS as it was updated regularly and is the least buggiest performant BLAS/LAPACK implementation.

macOS 13.3 updated the Accelerate framework after a long time with improved support for LAPACK APIs and has fixes for long-time known bugs in the older Accelerate's BLAS and LAPACK APIs. conda-forge has added support for this new Accelerate framework by using a shim library to expose its functionality to most conda-forge packages including numpy, scipy and pytorch.

You can use it by doing

conda install libblas=*=*_newaccelerate

As part of our regular toolchain updates, we're planning to update the default versions of GCC (for linux) to v14 and of Clang (for OSX) to v19, in one week.

For more details, see https://github.com/conda-forge/conda-forge-pinning-feedstock/pull/7421.

Microsoft's Visual Studio (VS) 2019 compiler has reached its end of life over a year ago. In the meantime, several projects have moved on and fail to compile with VS2019.

We are planning to update our default compilers on windows to the (fully compatible) successor VS2022 in one week from now.

This will not affect you as a general user of conda-forge packages on windows; the only potential impact is that if you are compiling locally with VS2019 against artefacts produced by conda-forge, you might be required to upgrade.

For more details see https://github.com/conda-forge/conda-forge.github.io/issues/2138.

CUDA 11.8 is the last holdover from the old days before conda-forge switched to the new and shiny CUDA 12+ infrastructure, where the CUDA toolchain is provided as native conda-packages, rather than a blob in an image.

For CUDA-enabled feedstocks, we've been building both 11.8 and 12.6 by default for a while now, but many feedstocks (notably pytorch, tensorflow, onnx, jax etc.) have dropped CUDA 11.8 for many months already.

Due to various constraints (details below), we are dropping CUDA 11.8 as a default version in our global pinning on June 5th. It will still be possible to opt into building CUDA 11.8 on a per-feedstock basis where this is necessary or beneficial.

NumPy 2.0 was a big change (the first major version in 15 years). For more than a year, we have been migrating feedstocks from NumPy 1.x to NumPy 2.x, and while not every affected feedstock has been done, we are planning to conclude the migration in one week. Note that NumPy 2 support is required for feedstocks that intend to support Python 3.13 and above.

For feedstocks that are not compatible with v2.x yet, this means you will have to add

numpy:
  - 1.26  # or 1.25

to your recipe/conda_build_config.yaml, and then rerender. Pins below 1.25 are not possible if your feedstock supports Python 3.12, as NumPy 1.25 was the first version with support for that Python version (and it will not be possible going forward to pin different NumPy versions for different Python versions).

Following a change in our governance, this document lives now in conda-forge/governance, along with the CSV files that list the core and emeritus members.

The base image for our Ubuntu Dockerfiles has been upgraded from Ubuntu 20.04 (focal) to Ubuntu 24.04 (noble) in PR #145. This change ensures continued support and access to newer packages and system libraries.

Downstream users building on top of the Ubuntu variant of our containers should verify compatibility with the updated environment.

Thanks to @rpanai for the contribution and to the reviewers for their input.