Inspiring Computing
The Inspiring Computing podcast is where computing meets the real world. This podcast aims to trigger your curiosity by talking to proficient and advanced users of MATLAB, Python, Julia who use these tools to deepen their understanding of the world, simulate, explore trade-offs and gain insights that help companies add more value. In addition to proficient users we will also talk with the product marketing, toolbox authors, package developers and library maintainers to see what drives the development and what issues they are solving for others to benefit from.
Inspiring Computing
Pixi and The Evolution of Package Management
In this episode, I speak with Wolf Vollprecht Co-founder of Prefix.dev and to key player in the condo forge ecosystem. We discuss the critical role of open source infrastructure, like PyPi aAnd the monthly cost associated with it emphasizing the importance of sustained investment for infrastructure.
Wolf shares his journey from studying mechanical engineering and falling in love with open source to contributing, to Conda forge and creating Mamba and pixi, a fast package manager. We dive into the capabilities of pixie a Rust based package management tool designed to be faster and more efficient than Conda. Pixie integrates well with both conda forge and PyPi environments and addresses the dependency and reproducibility issues, and supports cross-platform package management. Wolf also talks about the open-core business model supported by VC funding and grants, aiming to build a sustainable and enhanced packaging management ecosystem.
