feat(add): `--channel` parameter to specify channel. #4987

prady0t · 2025-11-27T11:41:21Z

Description

How Has This Been Tested?

Building locally and running pixi add --channel [channel_name] [package] now works and the manifest files are updated accordingly. Test it out with pixi add --channel bioconda samtools

Checklist:

I have performed a self-review of my own code
I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
I have added sufficient tests to cover my changes.
I have verified that changes that would impact the JSON schema have been made in schema/model.py.

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

baszalmstra · 2025-11-27T12:57:26Z

Thanks for the contribution. Could you take a look at the CI issues? Can you also add tests? Especially around what happens if the channel is already present?

There is also syntax for matchspec, which looks like bioconda::samtools. Might actually make sense to support that?

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

prady0t · 2025-11-29T11:34:02Z

There is also syntax for matchspec, which looks like bioconda::samtools. Might actually make sense to support that?

I'm quite new to pixi 😅 could you elaborate on this a bit more?

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

… into add-channel-parameter

prady0t · 2025-12-03T08:34:24Z

@baszalmstra I've tried adding support of MatchSpec's channel syntax. Users can now do pixi add conda-forge::pytorch=2.2 , and it will add conda-forge to the list of channels. I'll be adding some tests to verify this.

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

baszalmstra · 2025-12-05T14:24:40Z

Something seems to have broken in the tests. Can you take a look?

I will hold off with merging this until @ruben-arts gets back. I want his approval with regard to the UX.

Signed-off-by: prady0t <[email protected]>

prady0t · 2025-11-28T17:10:37Z

crates/pixi_cli/src/add.rs


+    // Add a channel
+    let channel = args.channel;
+    workspace.manifest().add_channels([PrioritizedChannel::from(NamedChannelOrUrl::Name(String::from(channel.unwrap_or_default()))).clone()], &FeatureName::DEFAULT, false)?;


This line just calls the add_channels() function with the args given from the user, so testing this is essentially testing the functionalities of add_channel() which is already tested and also includes the situation where we try to add channel when it's already present.

@baszalmstra Do you think we sould still try to add tests for this? If so could me point to where the tests for cli inputs are(or should be) present.

prady0t · 2025-12-07T20:49:23Z

tests/integration_python/test_main_cli.py

-    # successful after adding the channel
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "add",
-            "https://repo.prefix.dev/bioconda::snakemake-minimal",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-        stderr_contains="Added https://repo.prefix.dev/bioconda::snakemake-minimal",
-    )
-
-    # no message for initially unused feature...
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "add",
-            "https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge::xz",
-            "--feature=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-    )
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "workspace",
-            "environment",
            "add",
-            "prefix",
-            "--feature=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-    )
-    # ...but decent message on install:
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "install",
-            "--environment=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-        expected_exit_code=ExitCode.FAILURE,
-        stderr_contains="unavailable channel 'https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/'",
-    )
-    # and helpful message now feature is used:
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "add",
-            "https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge::libzlib",
-            "--feature=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-        expected_exit_code=ExitCode.FAILURE,
-        stderr_contains="pixi workspace channel add https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge",
-    )
-
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "workspace",
-            "channel",
-            "add",
-            "--feature=prefix",


Removed these as using matchspec syntax adds the channel if not found, hence these tests are irrelevant.

prady0t · 2025-12-07T20:51:23Z

crates/pixi_api/src/workspace/add/mod.rs

    spec_type: SpecType,
    dep_options: DependencyOptions,
    git_options: GitOptions,
+    channel: Option<Vec<NamedChannelOrUrl>>,


channel is now Option<Vec> as oppose to Option earlier. This helps us take url and local channel paths as part of matchspec as well.

Signed-off-by: prady0t <[email protected]>

prady0t · 2025-12-07T21:03:12Z

The tests are now passing, and I've added some tests to check for --channel arg as well as channel in matchspec.

baszalmstra · 2025-12-09T14:22:23Z

tests/integration_python/test_main_cli.py

-            "workspace",
-            "channel",
-            "add",
-            "https://repo.prefix.dev/bioconda",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-    )
-    # successful after adding the channel
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "add",
-            "https://repo.prefix.dev/bioconda::snakemake-minimal",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-        stderr_contains="Added https://repo.prefix.dev/bioconda::snakemake-minimal",
-    )
-
-    # no message for initially unused feature...
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "add",
-            "https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge::xz",
-            "--feature=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-    )
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "workspace",
-            "environment",
            "add",
-            "prefix",
-            "--feature=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-    )
-    # ...but decent message on install:
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "install",
-            "--environment=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-        expected_exit_code=ExitCode.FAILURE,
-        stderr_contains="unavailable channel 'https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/'",
-    )
-    # and helpful message now feature is used:
-    verify_cli_command(
-        [
-            pixi,
-            "add",
-            "https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge::libzlib",
-            "--feature=prefix",
-            "--manifest-path",
-            tmp_pixi_workspace,
-        ],
-        expected_exit_code=ExitCode.FAILURE,
-        stderr_contains="pixi workspace channel add https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge",
-    )
-
-    verify_cli_command(


Why did you remove these tests?

ruben-arts · 2025-12-10T10:00:03Z

My question is whether we should force the dependencies you specify when calling them with --channel if they should come from that channel. e.g. now it produces this:

pixi add --channel bioconda snakemake samtools

[workspace]
channels = ["conda-forge", "bioconda"]
platforms = ["osx-arm64"]

[dependencies]
snakemake = ">=9.14.3,<10"
samtools = ">=1.22.1,<2"

But

pixi add bioconda::snakemake bioconda::samtools

Creates:

[workspace]
channels = ["conda-forge", "https://conda.anaconda.org/bioconda"] # I would say this conda.anaconda.org part can be seen as a bug...
platforms = ["osx-arm64"]

[dependencies]
snakemake = { version = ">=9.14.3,<10", channel = "bioconda" } # Specifically this channel
samtools = { version = ">=1.22.1,<2", channel = "bioconda" } # Specifically this channel

Should these two-way's of defining create the same TOML? I think yes.

baszalmstra · 2025-12-10T10:07:53Z

I agree. @prady0t You can use the ChannelConfig to convert urls back to names.

prady0t · 2025-12-10T10:34:56Z

Thanks for the review, this is a bug indeed. Working on it now.

Add --channel argument to specify channel.

96b27f2

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

prady0t and others added 5 commits November 27, 2025 23:40

addresing test failure

fa8324a

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

Only accounting for --channel if input is specified

0f07dce

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

linter errors

e25c18b

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

adding info to docs

0d6e0c5

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

Merge branch 'main' into add-channel-parameter

ae9e562

prady0t added 2 commits December 3, 2025 13:50

Adding support of channel in MatchSpec

cc9d79e

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

Merge branch 'add-channel-parameter' of https://github.com/prady0t/pixi…

98fbf8d

… into add-channel-parameter

prady0t and others added 3 commits December 3, 2025 23:54

Merge branch 'main' into add-channel-parameter

55e0ffe

Moving the code to pixi_api

9ee7e8f

Signed-off-by: Pradyot Ranjan <[email protected]>

Merge branch 'main' into add-channel-parameter

ec4b2af

prady0t added 3 commits December 8, 2025 01:48

Use NamedChannelOrUrl instead of Channel

74becfc

Signed-off-by: prady0t <[email protected]>

Removing redundent tests

c033916

Signed-off-by: prady0t <[email protected]>

Removing redundent tests

b130eaa

Signed-off-by: prady0t <[email protected]>

prady0t commented Dec 7, 2025

View reviewed changes

Removing redundent tests

2f0e72a

Signed-off-by: prady0t <[email protected]>

baszalmstra reviewed Dec 9, 2025

View reviewed changes

baszalmstra mentioned this pull request Dec 10, 2025

feat: source records nameless match spec #5103

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feat(add): `--channel` parameter to specify channel. #4987

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prady0t commented Nov 27, 2025

Description

How Has This Been Tested?

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feat(add): `--channel` parameter to specify channel. #4987

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