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The configuration of pixi itself#

Apart from the project specific configuration pixi supports configuration options which are not required for the project to work but are local to the machine. The configuration is loaded in the following order:

Priority Location Comments
1 /etc/pixi/config.toml System-wide configuration
2 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pixi/config.toml XDG compliant user-specific configuration
3 $HOME/.config/pixi/config.toml User-specific configuration
4 $PIXI_HOME/config.toml Global configuration in the user home directory. PIXI_HOME defaults to ~/.pixi
5 your_project/.pixi/config.toml Project-specific configuration
6 Command line arguments (--tls-no-verify, --change-ps1=false, etc.) Configuration via command line arguments
Priority Location Comments
1 /etc/pixi/config.toml System-wide configuration
2 $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pixi/config.toml XDG compliant user-specific configuration
3 $HOME/Library/Application Support/pixi/config.toml User-specific configuration
4 $PIXI_HOME/config.toml Global configuration in the user home directory. PIXI_HOME defaults to ~/.pixi
5 your_project/.pixi/config.toml Project-specific configuration
6 Command line arguments (--tls-no-verify, --change-ps1=false, etc.) Configuration via command line arguments
Priority Location Comments
1 C:\ProgramData\pixi\config.toml System-wide configuration
2 %APPDATA%\pixi\config.toml User-specific configuration
3 $PIXI_HOME\config.toml Global configuration in the user home directory. PIXI_HOME defaults to %USERPROFILE%/.pixi
4 your_project\.pixi\config.toml Project-specific configuration
5 Command line arguments (--tls-no-verify, --change-ps1=false, etc.) Configuration via command line arguments

Note

The highest priority wins. If a configuration file is found in a higher priority location, the values from the configuration read from lower priority locations are overwritten.

Note

To find the locations where pixi looks for configuration files, run pixi with -vv.

Reference#

Casing In Configuration

In versions of pixi 0.20.1 and older the global configuration used snake_case we've changed to kebab-case for consistency with the rest of the configuration. But we still support the old snake_case configuration, for older configuration options. These are:

  • default_channels
  • change_ps1
  • tls_no_verify
  • authentication_override_file
  • mirrors and sub-options
  • repodata-config and sub-options

The following reference describes all available configuration options.

default-channels#

The default channels to select when running pixi init or pixi global install. This defaults to only conda-forge.

config.toml
default-channels = ["conda-forge"]

Note

The default-channels are only used when initializing a new project. Once initialized the channels are used from the project manifest.

change-ps1#

When set to false, the (pixi) prefix in the shell prompt is removed. This applies to the pixi shell subcommand. You can override this from the CLI with --change-ps1.

config.toml
change-ps1 = true

tls-no-verify#

When set to true, the TLS certificates are not verified.

Warning

This is a security risk and should only be used for testing purposes or internal networks.

You can override this from the CLI with --tls-no-verify.

config.toml
tls-no-verify = false

authentication-override-file#

Override from where the authentication information is loaded. Usually, we try to use the keyring to load authentication data from, and only use a JSON file as a fallback. This option allows you to force the use of a JSON file. Read more in the authentication section.

config.toml
authentication-override-file = "/path/to/your/override.json"

detached-environments#

The directory where pixi stores the project environments, what would normally be placed in the .pixi/envs folder in a project's root. It doesn't affect the environments built for pixi global. The location of environments created for a pixi global installation can be controlled using the PIXI_HOME environment variable.

Warning

We recommend against using this because any environment created for a project is no longer placed in the same folder as the project. This creates a disconnect between the project and its environments and manual cleanup of the environments is required when deleting the project.

However, in some cases, this option can still be very useful, for instance to:

  • force the installation on a specific filesystem/drive.
  • install environments locally but keep the project on a network drive.
  • let a system-administrator have more control over all environments on a system.

This field can consist of two types of input.

  • A boolean value, true or false, which will enable or disable the feature respectively. (not "true" or "false", this is read as false)
  • A string value, which will be the absolute path to the directory where the environments will be stored.

config.toml
detached-environments = true
or:
config.toml
detached-environments = "/opt/pixi/envs"

The environments will be stored in the cache directory when this option is true. When you specify a custom path the environments will be stored in that directory.

The resulting directory structure will look like this:

config.toml
detached-environments = "/opt/pixi/envs"
/opt/pixi/envs
├── pixi-6837172896226367631
   └── envs
└── NAME_OF_PROJECT-HASH_OF_ORIGINAL_PATH
    ├── envs # the runnable environments
    └── solve-group-envs # If there are solve groups

pinning-strategy#

The strategy to use for pinning dependencies when running pixi add. The default is semver but you can set the following:

  • no-pin: No pinning, resulting in an unconstraint dependency. *
  • semver: Pinning to the latest version that satisfies the semver constraint. Resulting in a pin to major for most versions and to minor for v0 versions.
  • exact-version: Pinning to the exact version, 1.2.3 -> ==1.2.3.
  • major: Pinning to the major version, 1.2.3 -> >=1.2.3, <2.
  • minor: Pinning to the minor version, 1.2.3 -> >=1.2.3, <1.3.
  • latest-up: Pinning to the latest version, 1.2.3 -> >=1.2.3.
config.toml
pinning-strategy = "no-pin"

mirrors#

Configuration for conda channel-mirrors, more info below.

config.toml
[mirrors]
# redirect all requests for conda-forge to the prefix.dev mirror
"https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge" = [
    "https://prefix.dev/conda-forge"
]

# redirect all requests for bioconda to one of the three listed mirrors
# Note: for repodata we try the first mirror first.
"https://conda.anaconda.org/bioconda" = [
    "https://conda.anaconda.org/bioconda",
    # OCI registries are also supported
    "oci://ghcr.io/channel-mirrors/bioconda",
    "https://prefix.dev/bioconda",
]

repodata-config#

Configuration for repodata fetching.

config.toml
[repodata-config]
# disable fetching of jlap, bz2 or zstd repodata files.
# This should only be used for specific old versions of artifactory and other non-compliant
# servers.
disable-jlap = true  # don't try to download repodata.jlap
disable-bzip2 = true # don't try to download repodata.json.bz2
disable-zstd = true  # don't try to download repodata.json.zst

pypi-config#

To setup a certain number of defaults for the usage of PyPI registries. You can use the following configuration options:

  • index-url: The default index URL to use for PyPI packages. This will be added to a manifest file on a pixi init.
  • extra-index-urls: A list of additional URLs to use for PyPI packages. This will be added to a manifest file on a pixi init.
  • keyring-provider: Allows the use of the keyring python package to store and retrieve credentials.
config.toml
[pypi-config]
# Main index url
index-url = "https://pypi.org/simple"
# list of additional urls
extra-index-urls = ["https://pypi.org/simple2"]
# can be "subprocess" or "disabled"
keyring-provider = "subprocess"

index-url and extra-index-urls are not globals

Unlike pip, these settings, with the exception of keyring-provider will only modify the pixi.toml/pyproject.toml file and are not globally interpreted when not present in the manifest. This is because we want to keep the manifest file as complete and reproducible as possible.

Mirror configuration#

You can configure mirrors for conda channels. We expect that mirrors are exact copies of the original channel. The implementation will look for the mirror key (a URL) in the mirrors section of the configuration file and replace the original URL with the mirror URL.

To also include the original URL, you have to repeat it in the list of mirrors.

The mirrors are prioritized based on the order of the list. We attempt to fetch the repodata (the most important file) from the first mirror in the list. The repodata contains all the SHA256 hashes of the individual packages, so it is important to get this file from a trusted source.

You can also specify mirrors for an entire "host", e.g.

config.toml
[mirrors]
"https://conda.anaconda.org" = [
    "https://prefix.dev/"
]

This will forward all request to channels on anaconda.org to prefix.dev. Channels that are not currently mirrored on prefix.dev will fail in the above example.

OCI Mirrors#

You can also specify mirrors on the OCI registry. There is a public mirror on the Github container registry (ghcr.io) that is maintained by the conda-forge team. You can use it like this:

config.toml
[mirrors]
"https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge" = [
    "oci://ghcr.io/channel-mirrors/conda-forge"
]

The GHCR mirror also contains bioconda packages. You can search the available packages on Github.