Conda Issues

[DonJayamanne]

Use conda info

• Does conda info work on a vanilla install of Conda Spike - Can we use conda list and conda info all the info we need to work with conda #6882

Use conda activate

• inheritEnv: Add prompt to flip "inheritEnv" setting to false to fix conda activation issue #7607
• Activate Environments using Paths (not env names) Activate conda environments using the path instead of the conda env name #3834
  • Using env paths always works (suggestion from Conda team)
• Decide if we're going to support conda versions older than 4.6 (i.e. stop calling source); only support conda 4.6 and newer
• Only use conda activate to activate conda environments (i.e. no more calls to source) Spike - Use only conda activate, stop calling source #8864
• Depending on the above item, fix activation failures with Fish Shell Python: Create Terminal error command noise included when default shell is fish #4959

Use conda run

• changes in PythonExecutionFactory and PythonExecutionService fix the following (Update PythonExecutionService to support "conda run". #7696):
  • formatting
  • linting
  • testing (partial)
  • installers (partial)
  • debugger (partial)
  • interpreter discovery (partial)
  • import sorting (partial)
  • jedi
  • refactoring
  • (datascience?)
• currently do exec() (Stop using "exec()" in the extension. #7697):
  • testing (partial)
  • installers (partial): In one case we use sudo and in poetry case we use path to binary directly. So this could not be addressed directly.
  • debugger (partial): python debug adapter uses adapter descriptor. So no changes were made
  • interpreter discovery (partial): Discussed with Don and should not be switched to python execution factory.
  • import sorting (partial)
  • code execution / terminal
  • (datascience?)
• ensure that (at this point) the extension only uses PythonExecutionFactory for running python
• Use conda run when debugging user code Use 'conda run' when debugging user code #8422
• verify it fixes Jupyter doesn't work with anaconda #5539, Environment gets activated after debugger starts (hence debugging with conda envs fail) #5559, debug test is hanging #3869
• make sure we're not explicitly doing activation for conda or any virtual environment executions (i.e. only activate as a side effect of creating a new terminal; Debugging fails when using a pipenv environment that gets activated with pipenv shell #4203 )

Verifying conda work is done

Basically we are no longer doing any shenanigans behind conda's back to support it and we are using the provided tooling as expected.

• Use some conda command to get the list of environments
• Only use conda activate to activate environments (i.e. don't use source)
• conda run
  • For executing tools (e.g. formatters, linters, and test runners)
  • For executing user files (e.g. the green play button)
  • For running the debugger

[DonJayamanne]

Suggestions/Notes:

• A/B test the changes
• Upstream VS Code fix (Support using a "clean" environment for the terminal vscode#70248)
  • Required
• No support for conda version < 4.6
  Leave as is for now. Current approach is a best approach.
• Minimum version of Conda Supported is 4.6
  • Suggest YES
• Should we expect users to have their shells pre-configured for Conda
  • I.e. ensure conda is in their path, etc...
  • Currently we attempt to get around this by running some conda scripts prior to activation of an environment.
  • Suggest YES for Non-Windows
• Activation on Windows
  • Activate base environment (this is required to ensure we first setup conda)
  • Then activate the required environment
• Enable activating conda environments by path
  • Its possible to create conda environments in a specific folder, in this case we need to activate it using the path not the name.
  • Suggest YES (enhancement)

Conda notes on activation:

• conda create
  Create a new conda environment from a list of specified packages. To use the created environment, use 'source activate envname' look in that directory first. This command requires either the -n NAME or -p PREFIX option.

• conda activate $ENVNAME
  Instructions can be found here (applies to >= 4.6)

• activation & paths
  Conda commands used to switch or move between installed environments. The conda activate command prepends the path of your current environment to the PATH environment variable so that you do not need to type it each time. deactivate removes it. Even when an environment is deactivated, you can still execute programs in that environment by specifying their paths directly, as in ~/anaconda/envs/envname/bin/program_name. When an environment is activated, you can execute the program in that environment with just program_name.

• Conda will never work in VSC

  • See here for details
  • Ensure ~/.bash_profile is clean
  • Install ananconda
  • Activation scripts will be added into ~/.bash_profile
    • However this is conditional
  • Hacky solution - Set path for anaconda when ever a terminal is opened.
  • Currently the path is set conditionally, we could probably prepend the path always. (I.e. rather than getting conda to add the path conditionally, we can do it ALWAYS)

[DonJayamanne]

TODO

** Conda Requirements**

• Look at comments in Conda command broken for new anaconda python installations #5503 (comment)
• File issues on Conda GitHub repo
  • How to activate conda environments in command prompt from within VS Code conda/conda#8702
  • Conda initialization scripts in ~/.bash_profile are not idempotent conda/conda#8703
• Idempotency of conda startup scripts in ./bash_profile & other platforms
  • Conda initialization scripts in ~/.bash_profile are not idempotent conda/conda#8703
• Add support for conda startup scripts in Command Prompt and PS
  • What are the commands for Command Prompt?
    • Upstream Issue How to activate conda environments in command prompt from within VS Code conda/conda#8702
  • What are the commands for PowerShell?
  • Note: We will expect users to have configured powershell for Conda.
  • If we have them, where are they?
  • Else current solution is actiavte base env, then activate specific env

[karthiknadig]

Note: There are some limitations on conda info --json if the extension is using the same command to find envs then it might be broken.
#5344

[DonJayamanne]

@karthiknadig what are the limitations/issues? Please could you provide more information.

[karrtikr]

Closing as stale.