Conda Environment in Colab

[whoopi24]

Hi everyone,

we tried to install conda locally (Miniconda) and to use it in Colab, but it seems so that something went wrong or got lost, since every time when we start a new runtime in Colab, we have to install it again and therefore, we also have to re-build the conda environment. That is very tedious and needs a lot of time which may not be necessary - so my question is, how to build a conda environment in Colab such that it permanently exists there ? Is this possible and has anyone of you a short explanation on that ? That would be really great :)

Thank you and best regards,
Marina Sommer

[ccalvocm]

Greetings @whoopi24

You can specify the directory for conda to install to using

conda install -p path_to_your_dir

So, you can mount your google drive and conda install there to make it permanent.

[ccalvocm]

@Joerg0 you have a typo, it's not !conda activate /content/drive/MyDrive/test-env, but !activate /content/drive/MyDrive/test-env as is in the notebook

[Joerg0]

True. This was badly formulated.
Actually: If I use
!activate /content/drive/MyDrive/test-env
it runs without error and without output.

Still if I want to check which environment is active with
!which python
!python --version
!echo $PYTHONPATH

i get:
/usr/local/bin/python
Python 3.10.10
/env/python

With:
!conda info --envs
I see both environments:

conda environments:
/content/drive/MyDrive/test-env
base /usr/local

but I can't activate the test-env with python 3.6.
Also if I install some packages which require py3.6 it aborts with an error recurring to py3.10.

So
!conda activate /content/drive/MyDrive/test-env
was already a tried out workaround.

[whoopi24]

Hi everyone who reads this: this issue is still a problem for our group and we would appreciate every form of help!

Thanks and best regards,
Marina

[whoopi24]

The issue has been solved by Joerg0, thank you for trying out so many different approaches!
If you have problems regarding the conda environment in Google Colab, I refer to the very detailed post about the solution of Joerg0: #137

Good luck to everyone !
Marina