[SOLVED] How to activate an Anaconda environment

How to activate an Anaconda environment

I'm on Windows 8, using Anaconda 1.7.5 64bit.

I created a new Anaconda environment with

conda create -p ./test python=2.7 pip

from C:\Pr\TEMP\venv\.

This worked well (there is a folder with a new python distribution). conda tells me to type

activate C:\PR\TEMP\venv\test

to activate the environment, however this returns:

No environment named "C:\PR\temp\venv\test" exists in C:\PR\Anaconda\envs

How can I activate the environment? What am I doing wrong?

Solution

If this happens you would need to set the PATH for your environment (so that it gets the right Python from the environment and Scripts\ on Windows).

Imagine you have created an environment called py33 by using:

conda create -n py33 python=3.3 anaconda

Here the folders are created by default in Anaconda\envs, so you need to set the PATH as:

set PATH=C:\Anaconda\envs\py33\Scripts;C:\Anaconda\envs\py33;%PATH%

Now it should work in the command window:

activate py33

The line above is the Windows equivalent to the code that normally appears in the tutorials for Mac and Linux:

$ source activate py33