Share and Reuse Environments

Your coworker is starting a new project but needs the same environment you've been using. They're on a different machine, maybe even a different OS. How do you share your exact setup with them?

This example walks through the full publish-and-consume workflow: Alice creates and publishes an environment, and Bob downloads and runs it with no manual setup needed.

Here's a visual overview of the workflow:

What You'll Need

• Nebi CLI installed
• Pixi installed
• A configured OCI registry (see Registry Setup)

Alice: Create and Publish the Environment

:::info Follow along Clone the example to follow along with this tutorial:

git clone https://github.com/nebari-dev/nebi.git
cd nebi/docs/examples/data-science-demo
nebi init

:::

Step 1: Create the workspace

Alice creates a data science environment with Python, scikit-learn, and Streamlit. Here's her pixi.toml:

[workspace]
name = "data-science-demo"
channels = ["conda-forge"]
platforms = ["linux-64", "linux-aarch64", "osx-arm64", "osx-64"]
version = "0.1.0"

[dependencies]
python = ">=3.11"
scikit-learn = ">=1.4"
streamlit = ">=1.30"

Step 2: Add code and tasks

Alice writes the training code in train.py:

train.py

from sklearn.datasets import load_iris
from sklearn.tree import DecisionTreeClassifier
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.metrics import accuracy_score, confusion_matrix

X, y = load_iris(return_X_y=True)
X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test = train_test_split(
    X, y, test_size=0.3, random_state=42
)

model = DecisionTreeClassifier(random_state=42)
model.fit(X_train, y_train)

y_pred = model.predict(X_test)
print(f"Accuracy: {accuracy_score(y_test, y_pred):.2f}")
cm = confusion_matrix(y_test, y_pred)
print("Confusion Matrix:")
print(cm)

And a Streamlit app for interactive predictions in app.py:

app.py

import streamlit as st
from sklearn.datasets import load_iris
from sklearn.tree import DecisionTreeClassifier

iris = load_iris()
model = DecisionTreeClassifier(random_state=42)
model.fit(iris.data, iris.target)

st.title("Iris Species Predictor")
features = [
    [
        st.slider("Sepal length", 4.0, 8.0, 5.8),
        st.slider("Sepal width", 2.0, 4.5, 3.0),
        st.slider("Petal length", 1.0, 7.0, 4.0),
        st.slider("Petal width", 0.1, 2.5, 1.2),
    ]
]
st.subheader(f"Predicted: {iris.target_names[model.predict(features)[0]]}")

Alice wires the scripts up as named tasks in pixi.toml so they can be run with a short command (pixi run train, pixi run app):

[tasks]
train = "python train.py"
app = "streamlit run app.py"

Alice installs the environment to generate the lock file:

pixi install

This creates pixi.lock, which pins the exact package versions for reproducibility.

She can then verify the tasks work locally by running the training task:

pixi run train

Output

Accuracy: 1.00
Confusion Matrix:
[[19  0  0]
 [ 0 13  0]
 [ 0  0 13]]

Or launch the Streamlit app:

pixi run app

Alice's workspace now looks like this:

.
├── README.md
├── app.py
├── pixi.lock
├── pixi.toml
└── train.py

Step 3: Publish to an OCI registry

Before publishing, configure a default registry (see Registry Setup for details):

nebi registry add \
  --default \
  --name <name> \
  --url <url> \
  --namespace <namespace> \
  --username <username>

For example, here's how it looks with Docker Hub:

nebi registry add \
  --name dockerhub \
  --url docker.io \
  --namespace alice \
  --username alice \
  --default

Output

Password:
Added local registry 'dockerhub' (docker.io)

Then publish. The --tag sets the version and --repo names the repository:

nebi publish data-science-demo --tag v1.0 --repo data-science-demo

Example output with Docker Hub:

Output

Published docker.io/alice/data-science-demo:v1.0 (digest: sha256:...)

The bundle now lives at docker.io/alice/data-science-demo:v1.0 and contains every file from Alice's workspace: pixi.toml, pixi.lock, train.py, app.py, README.md.

Bob: Download and Run the Environment

Bob doesn't need to know what packages Alice chose or how the environment was built. He just needs one command.

Import from the OCI registry

To recreate Alice's environment locally, Bob just needs to import the bundle:

nebi import <url>/<namespace>/data-science-demo:v1.0

For example, with Alice's Docker Hub registry, the command would be:

nebi import docker.io/alice/data-science-demo:v1.0

This restores all of Alice's workspace files into the current directory at their original relative paths:

.
├── README.md
├── app.py
├── pixi.lock
├── pixi.toml
└── train.py

Run the task

Now that Bob has the environment, he can run the training task:

pixi run train

Output

Accuracy: 1.00
Confusion Matrix:
[[19  0  0]
 [ 0 13  0]
 [ 0  0 13]]

Or launch the Streamlit app:

pixi run app

What Just Happened

Here's the full flow at a glance:

Step	Who	Command
Create workspace	Alice	nebi init + pixi add
Add tasks	Alice	Edit pixi.toml
Publish to OCI	Alice	nebi publish
Import environment	Bob	nebi import
Run task	Bob	pixi run train

With Nebi, Bob gets the same packages, the same versions, the same project files, and the same results as Alice without any manual setup.