How to create conda env with both name and path specified

Question

OS: Windows 10

It's fine to create an env with either name or path, but it doesn't work with both name and path:

Command:

conda create -name myname --prefix D:\proj\myconda\myname

Error:

conda create: error: argument -p/--prefix: not allowed with argument -n/--name

So how to create an env both with a specific name and path?

The benefit from that is:

1. It's more convenient to remember a shorter nick name for the env.
2. It's better to move the path to other drives to save space of the default C system drive in Windows OS.

Answer 1

create a folder wherever you want to keep you environment files, inside the folder run:

conda create --prefix=yourenvname

When you wish to use this env, move to the folder in which you ran the previous command and do:

source activate yourenvname

Or

You can run:

conda create --prefix=path/yourenvname 

This will create environment named "yourenvname" in the specified path.

Answer 2

Create conda environment with prefix:

conda create --prefix=path/to/envname # C:\path\to\envname for Windows users

Make sure that the directory specified is added to envs_dirs configuration

conda config --append envs_dirs path/to/envname # again, change if using Windows

Tip: If you are keeping multiple environments under a directory (e.g. /path/to holds multiple conda environments), then you can

conda config --append envs_dirs path/to # again, change if using Windows

and conda will pick up on all environments stored in /path/to.

After this step, conda should recognize that you want to include envname in your named environments. You can verify with:

conda info --envs

which should return something like:

# conda environments:
#

envname     /path/to/envname

Finally, to activate the environment, all you should need to do is

conda activate envname # replace envname with your environment name from prefix