Getting Started

The conda-lockfiles plugin is integrated directly into the following conda commands:

• conda create

• conda env create

• conda export

The create, env create and export commands allow you to create environments from lockfiles or save and share them, respectively.

Using conda create or conda env create to create environments from lockfiles

# Same committed file on another machine or in CI; conda uses the slice for the current subdir.  Autodetect format.
conda create --name my-env --file conda-lock.yml
conda create --name my-env --file dev.conda-lock.yml
conda env create --name my-env  --file pixi.lock

# If the format is not detected from the filename:
conda env create --name my-env --file dev.yml --env-spec=conda-lock-v1

Warning

Only version 6 format of the pixi lock file is supported. Earlier versions may cause errors.

Using conda export to create lockfiles

Export lockfile from existing environment.

# Single-platform export (current platform and activated environment, default)
conda export --file conda-lock.yml

# Single-platform export with explicit platform
conda export --file conda-lock.yml --platform linux-64

# Multi-platform export
conda export --file pixi.lock --platform linux-64 --platform osx-arm64

# Lockfile can be generated from an environment that isn't activated.
conda export --name my-env --file conda-lock.yml

# Export with custom filename (requires --format)
conda export --file dev-lock.yml --format conda-lock-v1

Special cases:

# Export with explicit format (overrides filename detection)
conda export --file conda-lock.yml --format yaml
# Warning: Filename 'conda-lock.yml' suggests format 'conda-lock-v1' but --format specifies 'yaml'. Using 'yaml' or the environment.yml format.

# Export to stdout (bypasses filename validation)
conda export > output.yml  # Uses default format
conda export --format conda-lock-v1 > anything.txt

Using conda export to save lockfiles with a different platform

If you have created an environment with the following command on the linux-64 platform:

conda create --name python-env --yes python

it’s possible to export it to a lockfile using the win-64 platform with the following command:

conda export --name python-env --format pixi-lock-v6 --platform win-64 --file pixi.lock

Warning

Currently, it is not possible to create an environment from a lockfile and then export it using a different platform. For example, an environment created using a lockfile using the linux-64 platform cannot be subsequently exported to the win-64 platform.

Example workflows

Simple export and create:

conda export --file conda-lock.yml           # Auto-detects conda-lock-v1
conda create -n prod --file conda-lock.yml   # Auto-detects conda-lock-v1

Create lock file to share across platforms:

conda export --file conda-lock.yml --platform linux-64 --platform osx-arm64 --platform --win-64
# Share conda-lock.yml with team
conda create -n sharedenv --file conda-lock.yml

Here is a simple script that uses conda requirements.txt (not a pip requirements.txt) files and changes the Python version to create multi-platform lock files for each Python version.

for py in 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14; do
  ver="${py//./}"
  name="my_env-py${ver}"
  lock_file_name="py${ver}.conda-lock.yml"
  conda create -y -n "${name}" --file requirements.txt "python=${py}"

  conda export -n "${name}" --file "${lock_file_name}" --format conda-lock-v1 --platform linux-64 --platform win-64 --platform osx-arm64

  conda env remove -n "${name}" -y
done

Tips on usage

• These lockfiles can be saved to your repositories and used in CI workflows for faster execution times

• They can also be used with conda-lock and pixi

• This project is still in beta; please file bugs and feature requests here

A Note about conda-lock

The conda-lock command is a specific command that can be used to create conda-lock.yaml files. It will need to be installed separately. Currently, the only additional functionality it provides is being able to produce a lock file from an environment.yaml file. For more information, see here.