CODEWITHSUNDEEP
anacondacondaminiconda
Sos
Sos

Reputation: 1949

Conda: Choose where packages are downloaded for each environment

I am running different conda env and I'd like to specify where the packages are downloaded to, rather than having all of them in my $home.

I have found this question which, at time of writing, has no answers. However, my question is different: I don't want to specify the pkg_dir in my .condarc because I want to have a different download dir for each project (space is not an issue).

How do I define the pkg_dir for a specific conda env?

To note, I'm creating environments as conda env create -f my_env.yml -p complete-env.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 809

Answers (1)

Roland Weber
Roland Weber

Reputation: 3655

A fundamental concept of conda is that packages get downloaded and extracted to a shared cache, from which they are selectively linked into the different conda environments. You want to work against this concept, so whatever you do will be hacky and have repercussions.

You could install a separate Miniconda for each of your projects, and (try to) make sure that they don't know about eachother by removing all conda-related files and environment settings from your home directory, or even use a different HOME for each project. Before working with a project, you'd have to put the correct conda on the PATH.

Or you could install Miniconda on a dedicated drive apart from your home directory, and put the conda environments inside your home directory. That would prevent conda from hard-linking the files. It would still download the packages into the shared cache, but then copy only the relevant files into each of your projects. Of course, copying is slower than hard-linking.

Specifying the package directory per environment rather than per conda installation is not possible, as darthbith has already pointed out in a comment.

Upvotes: 2

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