conda

Installation

To bootstrap a minimal distribution, use a minimal installer such as Miniconda or Miniforge.

Conda is also included in the Anaconda Distribution.

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Getting Started

If you install the Anaconda Distribution, you will already have hundreds of packages installed. You can see what packages are installed by running:

$ conda list

to see all the packages that are available, use:

$ conda search

and to install a package, use

$ conda install <package-name>

The real power of conda comes from its ability to manage environments. In conda, an environment can be thought of as a completely separate installation. Conda installs packages into environments efficiently using hard links by default when it is possible, so environments are space efficient, and take seconds to create.

The default environment, which conda itself is installed into, is called base. To create another environment, use the conda create command. For instance, to create an environment with PyTorch, you would run:

$ conda create --name ml-project pytorch

This creates an environment called ml-project with the latest version of PyTorch, and its dependencies.

We can now activate this environment:

$ conda activate ml-project

This puts the bin directory of the ml-project environment in the front of the PATH, and sets it as the default environment for all subsequent conda commands.

To go back to the base environment, use:

$ conda deactivate