Conda Python API
As of conda 4.4, conda can be installed in any environment, not just environments with names starting with _ (underscore). That change was made, in part, so that conda can be used as a Python library.
There are 3 supported public modules. We support:
import conda.cli.python_api
import conda.api
import conda.exports
The first 2 should have very long-term stability. The third is guaranteed to be stable throughout the lifetime of a feature release series--i.e. minor version number.
As of conda 4.5, we do not support pip install conda. However, we are considering that as a supported bootstrap method in the future.