Conda revision control tools

Today I learned that conda keeps track of its own revision history, and allows you to “install” to a specific point in that history.

conda list --revisions will get you the history.

conda install --revision <rev #> will return your env to that state. This “return” is similar to Git’s revert or reflog, in that it is an additive change to the env history, and no information is lost.

As Robin Wilson writes, the history is stored as a plaintext file, and includes the command history that created the current state. (For environments built with the --clone flag, cloned-environment revision history is not tracked. The command record begins with the create --clone, so doing anything programmatic with this could be pretty fragile.)

Adding this to your .bash_aliases gives you quick reporting on your active environment’s history. It will fail if no conda environment is active.

alias conhist="cat \${CONDA_PREFIX}/conda-meta/history | grep '# cmd' | cut -d' ' -f3-"

Note: Only conda commands apear to be tracked, so exercise discretion if your install process relies on pip.