Migrating from conda to conda-forge for Python package management

Anaconda changed its Term of Use to require payment from companies larger than 200 employees. Many companies are not willing to pay the subscription fees for a software they can substitute.

conda-forge is the free, really open source alternative for the conda Python package manager.

To migrate your development environment from conda to conda-forge

Install conda-forge

To install conda-forge

1. Navigate to https://conda-forge.org/download/,
2. Download the installer for your operating system, and follow the instructions ate the bottom of the page.

On macOS

1. Open a terminal
2. Execte the command
   bash ~/Downloads/Miniforge3-MacOSX-x86_64.sh
   • Answer yes when asked to accept the license terms
   • Press ENTER to allow the installation into your user directory
   • During the installation you can opt to activate the base environment when the terminal starts
     That step will update your terminal startup script, in case of iTerm2 it is ~/.zshrc

On Windows

1. Execute the Windows installer

Configuration

Check the version of conda on your workstation, and update Conda, it should be higher than 4.9

conda --version
conda update conda

To list the Conda config locations and channels

conda config --show-sources

To not to activate the conda base environment at startup execute the command

conda config --set auto_activate_base false

If the listed channels do not contain “conda-forge” configure conda to install packages from conda-forge, the free for everyone open source package repository

conda config --add channels conda-forge

If there are multiple channels are listed activate the strict channel priority to make sure the packages are first searched on the conda-forge channel

conda config --set channel_priority strict

Check the Conda configuration

To list the Conda config locations

conda config --show-sources

The usual Conda config location is ~/miniforge3/.condarc

To check the Conda configuration at the usual location

cat ~/miniforge3/.condarc

channels:
– conda-forge
channel_priority: strict

For more information see A brief introduction to conda-forge

This may only work with the not free Anaconda installation

Find conda-forge packages

• Start the Anaconda Navigator by executing in the terminal
  anaconda-navigator
• On the Environments tab click Channels
  
• Click the Add… button,
• Enter https://conda.anaconda.org/conda-forge/ into the text box,
• Press the Enter key, and
• Click the Update channels button
  
  

Usage

To activate the conda base environment in the terminal, execute
eval “$(~/miniforge3/bin/conda shell.YOUR_SHELL_NAME hook)”

For iTerm the command is

eval "$(~/miniforge3/bin/conda shell.bash hook)"

To install conda’s shell functions for easier access, first activate the conda base environment as above, then:

conda init

For changes to take effect, close and re-open your current shell.