constructor is a tool which allows constructing an installer for a collection of conda packages. Basically, it creates an Anaconda-like installer consisting of conda packages. This tool was previously proprietary and known as cas-installer.

As of version 1.3.0, constructor may be installed into any conda environment using:

$ conda install constructor

Once installed, the constructor command will be available:

$ constructor -h

The constructor command takes an installer specification directory as its argument. This directory needs to contain a file construct.yaml, which specifies the name of the installer, the conda channels to pull packages from, the conda packages included in the installer etc. . The complete list of keys in this file can be found in CONSTRUCT.md. Also, the directory may contain some additional optional files (such as a license file, and image files for the Windows installer). An example is located in examples/maxiconda.

• Constructor does not work with noarch-Python packages. All conda packages must be available for the platform you are building the installer for.
• An installer created by constructor does not need to include conda itself. If you require the ability to use conda after installation, add conda to the package list.
• An installer created by constructor is not the same as Miniconda. All packages you want to include in the installer need to be listed explicitly. In particular, on Windows this means that if you want the "Anaconda Prompt", you will have to list console_shortcut, as well as menuinst.
• For Windows builds, add the Continuum channels /free and /msys2 to the file constructor.yaml. This provides packages such as m2w64-toolchain which is a dependency of theano. It is best to add /msys2 as http://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/msys2.