Docs: mark miniconda3 versions as deprecated

[humitos]

Related #13149

[read-the-docs-community]

Documentation build overview

📚 dev | 🛠️ Build #33291058 | 📁 Comparing 5a851b5 against latest (e41c7c3)

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6 files changed · ± 6 modified

± Modified

• contribute.html
• install.html
• search-integration.html
• style-guide.html
• subscriptions.html
• tests.html

[humitos]

Hrm, I've got confused here. miniconda3 is the official distribution, and miniforge3 is the community edition that uses conda-forge behind the scenes and is faster. We may need to make a decision here..

[stsewd]

From #11690, isn't mambaforge the deprecated one (already marked as so)? Maybe we just need to update the miniconda version?

[agjohnson]

Yeah, I don't follow the conda ecosystem closely but it seems like asdf and/or miniconda just has a problem installing, not that it's deprecated.

Noted in the underlying issue, but it miniconda3 installs outside the application fine.

• Why this error on build? #13149 (comment)

We may need to make a decision here..

I'm not following what you're implying here. Are you suggesting we deprecate miniconda? It feels like there is more debugging to do here probably.

[humitos]

it seems like asdf and/or miniconda just has a problem installing, not that it's deprecated.

Yes. Installing miniconda inside our app has started to fail due to some environment variables we set there. I remember debugging this for a long time some time ago. I think these are the problematic ones -- but I don't remember exactly: https://github.com/readthedocs/readthedocs.org/blob/main/readthedocs/doc_builder/director.py#L816-L817

That's why you can install it without issues by jumping inside the Docker container directly -- those variables are not set.

I'm not following what you're implying here. Are you suggesting we deprecate miniconda? It feels like there is more debugging to do here probably.

We either deprecate miniconda in our app, or we build and expose the tools. Currently, we are not building miniconda3 for Ubuntu 26.04 and that's why it tries to install it --and fail.

[agjohnson]

Yeah I feel like the answer here is to debug this more and to build it for Ubuntu 26, not deprecate.

Yes. Installing miniconda inside our app has started to fail due to some environment variables we set there. I remember debugging this for a long time some time ago. I think these are the problematic ones -- but I don't remember exactly

Seems like CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV can trigger this, CONDA_PREFIX too if we set that.

 docker run --rm -ti readthedocs/build:ubuntu-26.04
docs@b4574b6f4ec4:~$ export CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV=/tmp/foo
docs@b4574b6f4ec4:~$ asdf install python miniconda3-3.12-24.9.2-0
Downloading python-build...
Cloning into '/home/docs/.asdf/plugins/python/pyenv'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 27994, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (121/121), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (56/56), done.
remote: Total 27994 (delta 87), reused 69 (delta 64), pack-reused 27873 (from 2)
Receiving objects: 100% (27994/27994), 6.54 MiB | 4.65 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (18782/18782), done.
python-build miniconda3-3.12-24.9.2-0 /home/docs/.asdf/installs/python/miniconda3-3.12-24.9.2-0
readlink: python-build: Invalid argument
Downloading Miniconda3-py312_24.9.2-0-Linux-x86_64.sh.sh...
-> https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-py312_24.9.2-0-Linux-x86_64.sh
Installing Miniconda3-py312_24.9.2-0-Linux-x86_64.sh...

EnvironmentLocationNotFound: Not a conda environment: /tmp/foo


BUILD FAILED (Ubuntu 26.04 using python-build 2.7.3-2-gebd788d0)

Inspect or clean up the working tree at /tmp/python-build.20260625183621.105
Results logged to /tmp/python-build.20260625183621.105.log

Last 10 log lines:

/tmp/python-build.20260625183621.105/Miniconda3-py312_24.9.2-0-Linux-x86_64.sh /tmp/python-build.20260625183621.105 ~/.asdf/plugins/python/pyenv
PREFIX=/home/docs/.asdf/installs/python/miniconda3-3.12-24.9.2-0
Unpacking payload ...

Installing base environment...

Preparing transaction: ...working... done
Executing transaction: ...working... done
installation finished.
docs@b4574b6f4ec4:~$