how to specify new environment location for conda create

Question

the default location for packages is .conda folder in my home directory. however, on the server I am using, there is a very strict limit of how much space I can use, which basically avoids me from putting anything under my home directory. how can I specify the location for the virtual environment that I want to create? Thanks! server is running Ubuntu.

Answer 1

Use the --prefix or -p option to specify where to write the environment files. For example:

conda create --prefix /tmp/test-env python=2.7

Will create the environment named /tmp/test-env which resides in /tmp/ instead of the default .conda.

Answer 2

like Paul said, use

conda create --prefix=/users/.../yourEnvName python=x.x

if you are located in the folder in which you want to create your virtual environment, just omit the path and use

conda create --prefix=yourEnvName python=x.x

conda only keep track of the environments included in the folder envs inside the anaconda folder. The next time you will need to activate your new env, move to the folder where you created it and activate it with

source activate yourEnvName