Anaconda activate

Question

I am using anaconda python. So every time, in my mac terminal, I input the terminal command:

source /Users/mylaptop/anaconda/bin/activate /Users/mylaptop/anaconda

And then I activated the anaconda python environment. But I don't want to write this command line every time, so I tried a bash script like this:

#! /bin/bash

source /Users/mylaptop/anaconda/bin/activate /Users/mylaptop/anaconda

and I put this file in the directory /usr/local/bin. But unfortunately, I cannot log into anaconda environment in this way. There is no error message showed up in the terminal. So I do not know what is happening here.

Could anyone help me out?

Answer 1

The easiest fix is to just put /Users/mylaptop/anaconda in your PATH, by adding something like

export PATH="/Users/mylaptop/anaconda:$PATH"

to your bash profile (~/.profile).

You can't put the activate script in a script because it has to be "sourced" to work. source causes the script to be run in your current shell (as opposed to a subshell, which is how the bash script you wrote is run). This is necessary because it modifies your PATH environment variable, and environment variables from your current shell cannot be modified by subshells.