CONTRIBUTING.md: Recommend local conda environments

[mlubin]

Using a global conda environment is error prone because ./build.sh modifies it. We should recommend a local environment instead.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

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• .gitignore

✅ Files skipped from review due to trivial changes (1)

• .gitignore

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Updated CONTRIBUTING.md to switch conda commands from a named environment (cuopt_dev) to a path-based environment (./.cuopt_env). Added .cuopt_env to .gitignore.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Contributing doc CONTRIBUTING.md	Replaced conda environment creation and activation examples to use a path-based environment (conda env create -p ./.cuopt_env, conda activate ./.cuopt_env) instead of the named environment cuopt_dev.
Git ignore .gitignore	Added .cuopt_env to ignore patterns to exclude the path-based Conda environment directory.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~2 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately reflects the main change: updating CONTRIBUTING.md to recommend local conda environments instead of global ones, matching the core objective of the PR.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly related to the changeset, explaining the rationale for recommending local conda environments and how it prevents issues with the build script.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch mlubin-patch-1

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 1

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

Inline comments:
In `@CONTRIBUTING.md`:
- Around line 139-141: Add an entry to .gitignore to exclude the path-based
conda environment named ".cuopt_env" referenced in CONTRIBUTING.md; update the
repository's .gitignore by adding a line for ".cuopt_env/" (or a broader pattern
like ".*env/") so the directory created by running the conda commands (conda env
create -p ./.cuopt_env ...) will not be committed to git, then commit the
updated .gitignore.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

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ℹ️ Review info

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• CONTRIBUTING.md

[rgsl888prabhu]

I have created a PR to address wheel size failure #1087