Anaconda: Can You Simply Copy an Installation / Environment Folder?

Question

Reinstalling environments is a huge hassle, I find that exporting and importing doesn't work and you have to manually figure out how to get newer packages to install and work together, so you must keep a log of installation history.

Can I just save the 'Anaconda2' or 'Anaconda3' folder and paste it into a new windows installation? What about 'Anaconda2\envs' or 'Anaconda3\envs'?

Thai

In the Anaconda Navigator there is an option to copy or duplicate (I forget the exact term and not at PC) when you select a non-base environment in the Environment tab – Shibboleth

Might be worth checking out conda-pack. Never used it, but it's supposedly for packaging relocatable envs. – Daisydaitzman

Answer 1

I was just googling around this same questions. It appears the answer is no, but I haven't actually tried it. That would be the best way to know for sure.

https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/user-guide/tasks/move-directory/

Empirin

Answer 2

Create a conda environment

conda create --name python=

To create a requirements.txt file:

conda list #Gives you list of packages used for the environment

conda list -e > requirements.txt #Save all the info about packages to your folder

To export environment file

activate conda env export > .yml

For other person to use the environment

conda env create -f <environment-name>.yml

Ashcan

Exporting doesn't work in my experience. You get errors while importing / creating due to package changes and updates. – Thai

In that case you need to specify the exact error because this is the official method of exporting a conda environment as per the documentation. – Ashcan

Excellent Idea, but it does not work while your target environment has absolutely no internet access where you have to pack the environment yourself – Kharkov

Answer 3

According to https://docs.anaconda.com/working-with-conda/reference/faq/, after you paste the folder, you can try

source <path to conda>/bin/activate

e.g. source ~/anaconda3/bin/activate, which initialises the folder into an anaconda installation.

Also, I tried this on Linux, and it worked. Not sure about Windows.

Booking