Managing environments

docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-environments.html

Creating an environment with commands

Creating an environment from an environment.yml file

Specifying a location for an environment

Updating an environment

Cloning an environment

Building identical conda environments

Activating an environment

Deactivating an environment

Determining your current environment

Viewing a list of your environments

Viewing a list of the packages in an environment

Using pip in an environment

Saving environment variables

Sharing an environment

Restoring an environment

Removing an environment

With conda, you can create, export, list, remove, and update environments that have
different versions of Python and/or packages installed in them. Switching or moving
between environments is called activating the environment. You can also share an
environment file.

Note

There are many options available for the commands described on this page. For details,
see Command reference.

Note

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conda activate and conda deactivate only work on conda 4.6 and later versions. For
conda versions prior to 4.6, run:

Windows: activate or deactivate

Linux and macOS: source activate or source deactivate

Tip

By default, environments are installed into the envs directory in your conda directory.
See Specifying a location for an environment or run conda create --help for information
on specifying a different path.

Use the terminal or an Anaconda Prompt for the following steps:

1. To create an environment:

conda create --name myenv

Note

Replace myenv with the environment name.

2. When conda asks you to proceed, type y :

proceed ([y]/n)?

This creates the myenv environment in /envs/ . This environment uses the same version
of Python that you are currently using because you did not specify a version.

3. To create an environment with a specific version of Python:

conda create -n myenv python=3.6

4. To create an environment with a specific package:

conda create -n myenv scipy

OR:

conda create -n myenv python

conda install -n myenv scipy

5. To create an environment with a specific version of a package:

conda create -n myenv scipy=0.15.0

OR:

conda create -n myenv python

conda install -n myenv scipy=0.15.0

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 6. To create an environment with a specific version of Python and multiple packages:

conda create -n myenv python=3.6 scipy=0.15.0 astroid babel

Tip

Install all the programs that you want in this environment at the same time. Installing 1
program at a time can lead to dependency conflicts.

To automatically install pip or another program every time a new environment is created,
add the default programs to the create_default_packages section of your .condarc
configuration file. The default packages are installed every time you create a new
environment. If you do not want the default packages installed in a particular
environment, use the --no-default-packages flag:

conda create --no-default-packages -n myenv python

Tip

You can add much more to the conda create command. For details, run conda create --
help .

Use the terminal or an Anaconda Prompt for the following steps:

1. Create the environment from the environment.yml file:

conda env create -f environment.yml

The first line of the yml file sets the new environment's name. For details see
Creating an environment file manually.

2. Activate the new environment: conda activate myenv

3. Verify that the new environment was installed correctly:

conda env list

You can also use conda info --envs .

You can control where a conda environment lives by providing a path to a target
directory when creating the environment. For example, the following command will
create a new environment in a subdirectory of the current working directory called
envs :

conda create --prefix ./envs jupyterlab=0.35 matplotlib=3.1 numpy=1.16

You then activate an environment created with a prefix using the same command used
to activate environments created by name:

conda activate ./envs

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Specifying a path to a subdirectory of your project directory when creating an
environment has the following benefits:

It makes it easy to tell if your project uses an isolated environment by including the
environment as a subdirectory.

It makes your project more self-contained as everything, including the required

software, is contained in a single project directory.

An additional benefit of creating your project’s environment inside a subdirectory is that

you can then use the same name for all your environments. If you keep all of your
environments in your envs folder, you’ll have to give each environment a different
name.

There are a few things to be aware of when placing conda environments outside of the
default envs folder.

1. Conda can no longer find your environment with the --name flag. You’ll generally
need to pass the --prefix flag along with the environment’s full path to find the
environment.

2. Specifying an install path when creating your conda environments makes it so that
your command prompt is now prefixed with the active environment’s absolute
path rather than the environment’s name.

After activating an environment using its prefix, your prompt will look similar to the
following:

(/absolute/path/to/envs) $

This can result in long prefixes:

(/Users/USER_NAME/research/data-science/PROJECT_NAME/envs) $

To remove this long prefix in your shell prompt, modify the env_prompt setting in your
.condarc file:

$ conda config --set env_prompt '({name})'

This will edit your .condarc file if you already have one or create a .condarc file if you
do not.

Now your command prompt will display the active environment’s generic name, which is
the name of the environment's root folder:

$ cd project-directory
$ conda activate ./env
(env) project-directory $

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Updating an environment
You may need to update your environment for a variety of reasons. For example, it may
be the case that:

one of your core dependencies just released a new version (dependency version
number update).

you need an additional package for data analysis (add a new dependency).

you have found a better package and no longer need the older package (add new
dependency and remove old dependency).

If any of these occur, all you need to do is update the contents of your environment.yml
file accordingly and then run the following command:

$ conda env update --prefix ./env --file environment.yml --prune

Note

The --prune option causes conda to remove any dependencies that are no longer
required from the environment.

Cloning an environment
Use the terminal or an Anaconda Prompt for the following steps:

You can make an exact copy of an environment by creating a clone of it:

conda create --name myclone --clone myenv

Note

Replace myclone with the name of the new environment. Replace myenv with the
name of the existing environment that you want to copy.

To verify that the copy was made:

conda info --envs

In the environments list that displays, you should see both the source environment and
the new copy.

Building identical conda environments

You can use explicit specification files to build an identical conda environment on the
same operating system platform, either on the same machine or on a different machine.

Use the terminal or an Anaconda Prompt for the following steps:

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 1. Run conda list --explicit to produce a spec list such as:

# This file may be used to create an environment using:

# $ conda create --name <env> --file <this file>
# platform: osx-64
@EXPLICIT
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/mkl-11.3.3-0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/numpy-1.11.1-py35_0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/openssl-1.0.2h-1.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/pip-8.1.2-py35_0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/python-3.5.2-0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/readline-6.2-2.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/setuptools-25.1.6-py35_0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/sqlite-3.13.0-0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/tk-8.5.18-0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/wheel-0.29.0-py35_0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/xz-5.2.2-0.tar.bz2
https://repo.continuum.io/pkgs/free/osx-64/zlib-1.2.8-3.tar.bz2

2. To create this spec list as a file in the current working directory, run:

conda list --explicit > spec-file.txt

Note

You can use spec-file.txt as the filename or replace it with a filename of your
choice.

An explicit spec file is not usually cross platform, and therefore has a comment at
the top such as # platform: osx-64 showing the platform where it was created.
This platform is the one where this spec file is known to work. On other platforms,
the packages specified might not be available or dependencies might be missing for
some of the key packages already in the spec.

To use the spec file to create an identical environment on the same machine or
another machine:

conda create --name myenv --file spec-file.txt

To use the spec file to install its listed packages into an existing environment:

conda install --name myenv --file spec-file.txt

Conda does not check architecture or dependencies when installing from a spec
file. To ensure that the packages work correctly, make sure that the file was created
from a working environment, and use it on the same architecture, operating
system and platform, such as linux-64 or osx-64.

Activating an environment
Activating environments is essential to making the software in the environments work
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well. Activation entails two primary functions: adding entries to PATH for the
environment, and running any activation scripts that the environment may contain.
These activation scripts are how packages can set arbitrary environment variables that
may be necessary for their operation.

When installing Anaconda, you have the option to “Add Anaconda to my PATH
environment variable.” This is not recommended because the add to PATH option
appends Anaconda to PATH. When the installer appends to PATH, it does not call the
activation scripts.

On Windows, PATH is composed of two parts, the system PATH and the user PATH. The
system PATH always comes first. When you install Anaconda for Just Me, we add it to the
user PATH. When you install for All Users, we add it to the system PATH. In the former
case, you can end up with system PATH values taking precedence over our entries. In the
latter case, you do not. We do not recommend multi-user installs.

Activation prepends to PATH. This only takes effect when you have the environment
active so it is local to a terminal session, not global.

To activate an environment: conda activate myenv

Note

Replace myenv with the environment name or directory path.

Conda prepends the path name myenv onto your system command.

You may receive a warning message if you have not activated your environment:

Warning:
This Python interpreter is in a conda environment, but the environment has
not been activated. Libraries may fail to load. To activate this environment
please see https://conda.io/activation.

If you receive this warning, you need to activate your environment. To do so on Windows,
run: c:\Anaconda3\Scripts\activate base in Anaconda Prompt.

Windows is extremely sensitive to proper activation. This is because the Windows library
loader does not support the concept of libraries and executables that know where to
search for their dependencies (RPATH). Instead, Windows relies on a dynamic-link library
search order.

If environments are not active, libraries won't be found and there will be lots of errors.
HTTP or SSL errors are common errors when the Python in a child environment can't find
the necessary OpenSSL library.

Conda itself includes some special workarounds to add its necessary PATH entries. This
makes it so that it can be called without activation or with any child environment active.
In general, calling any executable in an environment without first activating that
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environment will likely not work. For the ability to run executables in activated
environments, you may be interested in the conda run command.

If you experience errors with PATH, review our troubleshooting.

Conda init
Earlier versions of conda introduced scripts to make activation behavior uniform across
operating systems. Conda 4.4 allowed conda activate myenv . Conda 4.6 added extensive
initialization support so that conda works more quickly and less disruptively on a wide
variety of shells (bash, zsh, csh, fish, xonsh, and more). Now these shells can use the
conda activate command. Removing the need to modify PATH makes conda less
disruptive to other software on your system. For more information, read the output from
conda init --help .

One setting may be useful to you when using conda init is:

auto_activate_base: bool

This setting controls whether or not conda activates your base environment when it first
starts up. You'll have the conda command available either way, but without activating
the environment, none of the other programs in the environment will be available until
the environment is activated with conda activate base . People sometimes choose this
setting to speed up the time their shell takes to start up or to keep conda-installed
software from automatically hiding their other software.

Nested activation
By default, conda activate will deactivate the current environment before activating the
new environment and reactivate it when deactivating the new environment. Sometimes
you may want to leave the current environment PATH entries in place so that you can
continue to easily access command line programs from the first environment. This is
most commonly encountered when common command-line utilities are installed in the
base environment. To retain the current environment in the PATH, you can activate the
new environment using:

conda activate --stack myenv

If you wish to always stack when going from the outermost environment, which is
typically the base environment, you can set the auto_stack configuration option:

conda config --set auto_stack 1

You may specify a larger number for a deeper level of automatic stacking, but this is not
recommended since deeper levels of stacking are more likely to lead to confusion.

Environment variable for DLL loading verification

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If you don't want to activate your environment and you want Python to work for DLL
loading verification, then follow the troubleshooting directions.

Warning

If you choose not to activate your environment, then loading and setting environment
variables to activate scripts will not happen. We only support activation.

Deactivating an environment
To deactivate an environment, type: conda deactivate

Conda removes the path name for the currently active environment from your system
command.

Note

To simply return to the base environment, it's better to call conda activate with no
environment specified, rather than to try to deactivate. If you run conda deactivate from
your base environment, you may lose the ability to run conda at all. Don't worry, that's
local to this shell - you can start a new one. However, if the environment was activated
using --stack (or was automatically stacked) then it is better to use conda deactivate .

Determining your current environment

Use the terminal or an Anaconda Prompt for the following steps.

By default, the active environment---the one you are currently using---is shown in
parentheses () or brackets [] at the beginning of your command prompt:

(myenv) $

If you do not see this, run:

conda info --envs

In the environments list that displays, your current environment is highlighted with an
asterisk (*).

By default, the command prompt is set to show the name of the active environment. To
disable this option:

conda config --set changeps1 false

To re-enable this option:

conda config --set changeps1 true

Viewing a list of your environments

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To see a list of all of your environments, in your terminal window or an Anaconda
Prompt, run:

conda info --envs

OR

conda env list

A list similar to the following is displayed:

conda environments:
myenv /home/username/miniconda/envs/myenv
snowflakes /home/username/miniconda/envs/snowflakes
bunnies /home/username/miniconda/envs/bunnies

If this command is run by an administrator, a list of all environments belonging to all

users will be displayed.

Viewing a list of the packages in an environment

To see a list of all packages installed in a specific environment:

If the environment is not activated, in your terminal window or an Anaconda

Prompt, run:

conda list -n myenv

If the environment is activated, in your terminal window or an Anaconda Prompt,

run:

conda list

To see if a specific package is installed in an environment, in your terminal window or an

Anaconda Prompt, run:

conda list -n myenv scipy

Using pip in an environment

To use pip in your environment, in your terminal window or an Anaconda Prompt, run:

conda install -n myenv pip

conda activate myenv
pip <pip_subcommand>

Issues may arise when using pip and conda together. When combining conda and pip, it
is best to use an isolated conda environment. Only after conda has been used to install
as many packages as possible should pip be used to install any remaining software. If

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modifications are needed to the environment, it is best to create a new environment
rather than running conda after pip. When appropriate, conda and pip requirements
should be stored in text files.

We recommend that you:

Use pip only after conda

Install as many requirements as possible with conda then use pip

Pip should be run with --upgrade-strategy only-if-needed (the default)

Do not use pip with the --user argument, avoid all “users” installs

Use conda environments for isolation

Create a conda environment to isolate any changes pip makes

Environments take up little space thanks to hard links

Care should be taken to avoid running pip in the “root” environment

Recreate the environment if changes are needed

Once pip has been used, conda will be unaware of the changes

To install additional conda packages, it is best to recreate the environment

Store conda and pip requirements in text files

Package requirements can be passed to conda via the --file argument

Pip accepts a list of Python packages with -r or --requirements

Conda env will export or create environments based on a file with conda and pip
requirements

Saving environment variables

Conda environments can include saved environment variables.

Suppose you want an environment "analytics" to store both a secret key needed to log in
to a server and a path to a configuration file. The sections below explain how to write a
script named env_vars to do this on Windows and macOS or Linux.

This type of script file can be part of a conda package, in which case these environment
variables become active when an environment containing that package is activated.

You can name these scripts anything you like. However, multiple packages may create
script files, so be sure to use descriptive names that are not used by other packages. One
popular option is to give the script a name in the form packagename-scriptname.sh , or
on Windows, packagename-scriptname.bat .

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Windows
1. Locate the directory for the conda environment in your Anaconda Prompt by
running in the command shell %CONDA_PREFIX% .

2. Enter that directory and create these subdirectories and files:

cd %CONDA_PREFIX%
mkdir .\etc\conda\activate.d
mkdir .\etc\conda\deactivate.d
type NUL > .\etc\conda\activate.d\env_vars.bat
type NUL > .\etc\conda\deactivate.d\env_vars.bat

3. Edit .\etc\conda\activate.d\env_vars.bat as follows:

set MY_KEY='secret-key-value'
set MY_FILE=C:\path\to\my\file

4. Edit .\etc\conda\deactivate.d\env_vars.bat as follows:

set MY_KEY=
set MY_FILE=

When you run conda activate analytics , the environment variables MY_KEY and MY_FILE
are set to the values you wrote into the file. When you run conda deactivate , those
variables are erased.

macOS and Linux

1. Locate the directory for the conda environment in your terminal window by
running in the terminal echo $CONDA_PREFIX .

2. Enter that directory and create these subdirectories and files:

cd $CONDA_PREFIX
mkdir -p ./etc/conda/activate.d
mkdir -p ./etc/conda/deactivate.d
touch ./etc/conda/activate.d/env_vars.sh
touch ./etc/conda/deactivate.d/env_vars.sh

3. Edit ./etc/conda/activate.d/env_vars.sh as follows:

#!/bin/sh

export MY_KEY='secret-key-value'
export MY_FILE=/path/to/my/file/

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 4. Edit ./etc/conda/deactivate.d/env_vars.sh as follows:

#!/bin/sh

unset MY_KEY
unset MY_FILE

When you run conda activate analytics , the environment variables MY_KEY and MY_FILE
are set to the values you wrote into the file. When you run conda deactivate , those
variables are erased.

Sharing an environment
You may want to share your environment with someone else---for example, so they can
re-create a test that you have done. To allow them to quickly reproduce your
environment, with all of its packages and versions, give them a copy of your
environment.yml file .

Exporting the environment.yml file

Note

If you already have an environment.yml file in your current directory, it will be

overwritten during this task.

1. Activate the environment to export: conda activate myenv

Note

Replace myenv with the name of the environment.

2. Export your active environment to a new file:

conda env export > environment.yml

Note

This file handles both the environment's pip packages and conda packages.

3. Email or copy the exported environment.yml file to the other person.

Exporting an environment file across platforms

If you want to make your environment file work across platforms, you can use the conda
env export --from-history flag. This will only include packages that you’ve explicitly asked
for, as opposed to including every package in your environment.

For example, if you create an environment and install Python and a package:

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conda install python=3.7 codecov

This will download and install numerous additional packages to solve for dependencies.
This will introduce packages that may not be compatible across platforms.

If you use conda env export , it will export all of those packages. However, if you use
conda env export --from-history , it will only export those you specifically chose:

(env-name) ➜ ~ conda env export --from-history

name: env-name
channels:
- conda-forge
- defaults
dependencies:
- python=3.7
- codecov
prefix: /Users/username/anaconda3/envs/env-name

Note

If you installed Anaconda 2019.10 on macOS, your prefix may be

/Users/username/opt/envs/env-name .

Creating an environment file manually

You can create an environment file (environment.yml) manually to share with others.

EXAMPLE: A simple environment file:

name: stats
dependencies:
- numpy
- pandas

EXAMPLE: A more complex environment file:

name: stats2
channels:
- javascript
dependencies:
- python=3.6 # or 2.7
- bokeh=0.9.2
- numpy=1.9.*
- nodejs=0.10.*
- flask
- pip:
- Flask-Testing

Note

Note the use of the wildcard * when defining the patch version number. Defining the
version number by fixing the major and minor version numbers while allowing the patch
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version number to vary allows us to use our environment file to update our environment
to get any bug fixes whilst still maintaining consistency of software environment.

You can exclude the default channels by adding nodefaults to the channels list.

channels:
- javascript
- nodefaults

This is equivalent to passing the --override-channels option to most conda commands.

Adding nodefaults to the channels list in environment.yml is similar to removing

defaults from the channels list in the .condarc file. However, changing
environment.yml affects only one of your conda environments while changing .condarc
affects them all.

For details on creating an environment from this environment.yml file, see Creating an
environment from an environment.yml file.

Restoring an environment
Conda keeps a history of all the changes made to your environment, so you can easily
"roll back" to a previous version. To list the history of each change to the current
environment: conda list --revisions

To restore environment to a previous revision: conda install --revision=REVNUM or

conda install --rev REVNUM .

Note

Replace REVNUM with the revision number.

Example: If you want to restore your environment to revision 8, run conda install --rev 8 .

Removing an environment
To remove an environment, in your terminal window or an Anaconda Prompt, run:

conda remove --name myenv --all

You may instead use conda env remove --name myenv .

To verify that the environment was removed, in your terminal window or an Anaconda
Prompt, run:

conda info --envs

The environments list that displays should not show the removed environment.

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