Understanding Anaconda's warning about adding to PATH variable

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I have decided to dabble my toes in using Anaconda in addition to pip, mainly so I can install Github's hub wrapper for git.

When I installed Anaconda, one of the prompts asked if I wanted to add Conda to the PATH variable, and recommended against NOT doing that, so I didn't.

I'd like to continue using Git Bash, as it is the only terminal interface I know how to use, and don't currently want to learn how to use the terminal that Anaconda provides. I did not fully understand the warning's explanation:

Not Recommended. Instead, open Anaconda3 with the Windows Start menu and select "Anaconda (64-bit)". This "add to PATH" option makes ANaconda get found before previously installed software, but may cause problems requiring you to uninstall and reinstall Anaconda.

I'm rather new to developing actual software, and pretty much do everything exclusively in Python in PyCharm on Windows, only occasionally using the terminal. That is changing fast however.

I'd like to know how likely these problems are in my case, under what conditions this will cause issues, and basically whether I should heed the warning or not.

Edit As a point of interest, Anaconda literally disappeared from my machine completely when I added it's directory to PATH. It left behind the terminal, which itself could not find conda when I did conda --version or where conda.

anaconda3 anaconda python git
1 Answers

Heed the warning, don't add the anaconda path to %PATH%. There may be commands with similar names. Just use the anaconda cmd line prompt. When I use the anaconda prompt I just use 4 commands

  • python ...
  • taskkill /f /im python.exe - kill python programs when they hang up
  • dir -- same as git bash
  • cd -- same as git bash

You can always type help to see what other built-in windows commands are available or follow the command name with /? to find out what the parameters are. A bit like man pages on unix.

If you look at the anaconda prompt, what it does is

%windir%\System32\cmd.exe "/K" C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\Scripts\activate.bat C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3

The problem with just using git bash is it only knows about its own little world and nothing outside it. It is just a way of bringing in *nix tools to Windows for the people who are accustomed to *nix commands can't be bothered to find out what the windows equivalents are (sometimes there aren't any).

Some of the commands (like ln -s) don't work. Since git bash is a *nix prompt, it does not understand windows commands so it won't be able to use this. The only other way is to use the anaconda command prompt. It is a windows command line. If you just wish to type pip and conda commands, the anaconda cmd prompt has been set up to run them. You don't need to learn anything else.

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