refactor(anaconda): ♻️ refactor & update to 24.5.0

[ran-dall]

I've supercharged the Anaconda DevContainer feature after dealing with numerous issues because of outdated versions and compatibility problems across different environments. So, I took some time to completely revamp this (for work reasons mainly), and thereby thought to contribute back here. The result might be more robust than necessary, but I've written it in a functional manner that makes it easy to edit if there are maintenance concerns.

A major addition is mamba support – a much faster package manager that's becoming standard across Anaconda deployments. Having it installed alongside conda gives users more options without any drawbacks. I personally prefer using Mamba now because environment setup takes significantly less time than before.

I've introduced several new configuration options: users can now toggle useCondaForge for better package compatibility and more permissive licensing, control Mamba installation with installMamba, configure system package manager usage via useSystemPackages, and choose between full Anaconda or minimal Miniconda with installFullAnaconda.

I've also changed the default to miniconda since for our use-case it makes more sense and it manages to do most of what you need in most cases, also, it doesn't take 6+ mins to bootstrap on some machines. However, I can understand if we want to revert this back to installing full Anaconda by default. Either way, I've included both options.

The installation script is now smarter, detecting which Linux distribution it's running on and adapting accordingly. I've added logging and created helpful aliases for frequently used commands. I had some trouble using the devcontainer CLI tool, but the documentation has been completely revamped to showcase all these new features, and the test suite has been rebuilt to be more reliable across different environments.

It should also now be updated to the latest version.

Update: I made a little project repo: https://github.com/ran-dall/devcontainer-features-anaconda

[Kaniska244]

Hello @ran-dall ,

Thank you for the contribution. I have left a few comments & also please resolve the conflict. Kindly let me know in case of any clarification required on the same.

With Regards,
Kaniska

[Kaniska244]

Any specific reason why we need this devcontainer-feature.json inside the test folder? We shouldn’t normally need this here. Could this be removed please?

[Kaniska244]

The ubuntu focal version is reaching EOL on 31st May 2025. Would you kindly change the "image" tag for the relevant test cases to ubuntu:noble & ubuntu:jammy.
Also as per this change I believe we intend to open up this anaconda feature for RHEL based linux distributions. In that case, would it be possible to add test cases based on RHEL based other popular open source linux distributions such as almalinux, rocky & centos .

[Kaniska244]

Kindly change this OCI reference back to to the official one.

[Kaniska244]

Would it be possible to add the following steps or something similar at the end of the test scripts wherever conda installation is applicable, to see if the user has write permission in the conda installation directory.

check "conda-update-conda" bash -c "conda update -y conda"
check "conda-install-tensorflow" bash -c "conda create --name test-env -c conda-forge --yes tensorflow"
check "conda-install-pytorch" bash -c "conda create --name test-env -c conda-forge --yes pytorch"