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In the previous tip, I explained the differences between conda, Anaconda, and Miniconda.
I said that you can use conda to manage virtual environments:
In today’s tip, I’m going to explain the benefits of virtual environments and the how to use virtual environments in conda.
Let’s go! 👇
A virtual environment is like a “workspace” where you can install a set of packages with specific versions. Each environment is isolated from all other environments, and also isolated from the base environment. (The base environment is created when you install conda.)
So, why use virtual environments at all?
Thus by using environments, you won’t breaking existing projects when you install, update, or remove packages, since each project can have its own environment.
You can also delete environments once you’re done with them, and if you run into problems with an environment, it’s easy to start a new one!
conda environments have a lot of complexity, but there are actually only six commands you need to learn in order to get most of the benefits:
1️⃣ conda create -n myenv jupyter pandas matplotlib scikit-learn
This tells conda to:
That last point is a mouthful, but it basically means that conda will try to avoid any conflicts between package dependencies.
Note: conda stores all of your environments in one location on your computer, so it doesn’t matter what directory you are in when you create an environment.
2️⃣ conda activate myenv
This activates the myenv environment, such that you are now working in the myenv workspace.
In other words:
Note: Activating an environment does not change your working directory.
3️⃣ conda list
This lists all of the packages that are installed in the active environment (along with their version numbers). If you followed my commands above, you’ll see python, jupyter, pandas, matplotlib, scikit-learn, and all of their dependencies.
4️⃣ conda env list
This lists all of the conda environments on your system, with an asterisk (*) next to the active environment.
5️⃣ conda deactivate
This exits the active environment, which will usually take you back to the “base” environment (which was created by Anaconda or Miniconda during installation).
6️⃣ conda env remove -n myenv
This permanently deletes the myenv environment. You can’t delete the active environment, so you have to deactivate myenv (or activate a different environment) first.
If you want to learn more about conda environments, check out this section of the user guide:
If you want a broader view of conda and its capabilities, check out this section:
🔗 Common tasks
Or, just shoot me an email and I’m happy to help! 💌
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See you next Tuesday!
- Kevin
P.S. How to Pass the Pepper While Social Distancing (YouTube)
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