Downsizing from Anaconda to Miniconda

Question

I had installed Anaconda on my system before I knew the difference between Anaconda and Miniconda. I would like to downsize to Miniconda since I don't want the bloat of Anaconda, but I already have a handful of environments set up.

So far the only way I can think of migrating is to completely get rid of everything right now, install Miniconda, and then recreate my environments by hand, but that seems quite arduous. Is there a smarter way of going about this?

Answer 1

I agree with @darthbith: Export the envs to YAML files (conda env export) then recreate them once you have Miniconda installed (conda env create).

While there are some experimental tools for packaging and moving envs (i.e., so you avoid having to redownload packages), they only work on a single env basis. So, I can't see how going this route one could avoid making multiple copies of many of the shared files. Instead, if you let Conda handle the environment (re)creation, it will leverage hardlinks to minimize disk usage, and that seems to be one of your aims.

It may be possible to avoid redownloading packages during the environment recreations by retaining the pkgs directory in the root of your Anaconda install, then copying its contents over into the pkgs of the Miniconda install. I would only copy folders/tarballs that don't conflict with the ones that come with Miniconda. After finishing environment recreation, then a conda clean -p would likely be in order, since Anaconda includes many packages that likely aren't getting reused.