Standardising keys in environment.yml files

[jamesp]

Hi conda-lock team, congrats on getting v1.0 shipped! A load of really great improvements we'll be adopting in our workflow.

I like the idea of platform addition to the environment.yml file. It keeps the environment definition simple and in one place. However, I am a little concerned with the lack of standardisation of the environment.yml format - have you managed to have any conversations with the core conda dev team about this? There is also an open issue https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/10916 for formalising custom user-metadata additions to environment.yml, but so far this not received any interest from the core conda dev team.

It would be great if conda-lock could push forward the standardisation of the conda environment specification. e.g. could we look to get the new conda-lock keywords added to the documentation on conda.io?

[scottyhq]

I am a little concerned with the lack of standardisation of the environment.yml format

Just wanted to highlight this concern. conda-lock has been wonderful and the unified lockfile is really great for sharing cross-platform environments in a single file, but it's frustrating to have to keep rendering the older platform-specific files. Seems like a standard format these various tools could consume would be a great convenience. Specifically: conda create -f conda-lock.yml (or mamba create for that matter) would just work https://github.com/mamba-org/mamba/issues/1884