Option to filter repodata by date

[maresb]

Would it be feasible to add a "publish_date ≤" filter so that mamba would effectively invoke the solver as if it were running on a date in the past?

It's a common problem that beginners forget to conda-lock or pip freeze their requirements, and their code no longer runs with up-to-date versions. In such situations, such a filter would be extremely useful, effectively acting as a time machine.

Assuming the solver is more-or-less fed the contents of repodata.json, would it simply be a matter of filtering on the timestamp property? (I checked, and 97.6% of packages in conda-forge's noarch repodata have the timestamp property. The earilest timestamp is from April 18, 2018.)

I originally asked about this in:
conda/conda-lock#112

[wolfv]

Yes, it should be possible. For proper support we may want to add this to libsolv.

Ps it's also something we've been thinking about!