Anaconda

Anaconda is a distribution of Python (as well as R) that is specifically suited for scientific purposes (e.g. data science, machine learning, large-scale data processing, predictive analytics) with the goal of simplifying package management and deployment

Anaconda (and Miniconda) uses the conda package manager, allowing us to:

  • manage dependencies
  • create isolated environments (ie standalone directories that contain specific versions of Python and other packages)
    • conda create

Conda environment

Conda environments allow us to maintain isolated containers of specific versions of Python and 3rd party dependencies.

When you run a conda install command, it installs the specified package and their dependencies into the currently active conda environment, not just the current directory tree.

  • we can also use pip install if using pip within a conda environment

Resources