Using Pip to install packages to an Anaconda environment

I solved this problem the following way:

If you have a non-conda pip as your default pip but conda python is your default python (as below)

>which -a pip
/home/<user>/.local/bin/pip   
/home/<user>/.conda/envs/newenv/bin/pip
/usr/bin/pip

>which -a python
/home/<user>/.conda/envs/newenv/bin/python
/usr/bin/python

Then instead of just calling pip install <package>, you can use the module flag -m with python so that it uses the anaconda python for the installation

python -m pip install <package>

This installs the package to the anaconda library directory rather than to the library directory associated with (the non-anaconda) pip

EDIT - The reason this works is as follows:

The command pip references a specific pip file/shortcut (which -a pip tells you which one). Similarly, the command python references a specific python file (which -a python tells you which one). For one reason or another these two commands can become unsynchronized, so that your 'default' pip is in a different folder than your default python, and therefore is associated with a different version of python.

In contrast, the python -m pip construction does not use the shortcut that the pip command points to. Instead, it asks python to find its version of pip and use that version to install a package.

All you have to do is open an Anaconda prompt and type

pip install package-name

It will automatically install to the Anaconda environment without having to use

conda install package-name

Since some of the Conda packages may lack support over time, it is required to install using pip and this is one way to do it.

If you have pip installed in Anaconda, you can run the following in Jupyter Notebook or in your Python shell that is linked to Anaconda.

pip.main(['install', 'package-name'])

Check your version of pip with pip.__version__. If it is version 10.x.x or above, then install your Python package with this line of code:

subprocess.check_call([sys.executable, '-m', 'pip', 'install', '--upgrade', 'package-name'])

In your Jupyter Notebook document, you can install Python packages through pip in a cell this way;

!pip install package-name

Or you could use your Python version associated with Anaconda:

!python3.6 -m pip install package-name

This is what worked for me (Refer to image linked)

1. Open Anaconda
2. Select Environments in the left hand pane below home
3. Just to the right of where you selected and below the "search environments" bar, you should see base(root). Click on it
4. A triangle pointing right should appear, click on it an select "open terminal"
5. Use the regular pip install command here. There is no need to point to an environment/ path

For future reference, you can find the folder your packages are downloading to if you happen to have a requirement already satisfied. You can see it if you scroll up in the terminal. It should read something like: requirement already satisfied and then the path

[]

If you didn't add pip when creating a Conda environment,

conda create -n env_name pip

and also didn't install pip inside the environment,

source activate env_name
conda install pip

then the only pip you got is the system pip, which will install packages globally.

Bus as you can see in this issue, even if you did either of the procedure mentioned above, the behavior of pip inside the Conda environment is still kind of undefined.

To ensure using the pip installed inside the Conda environment without having to type the lengthy /home/username/anaconda/envs/env_name/bin/pip, I wrote a shell function:

# Using pip to install packages inside Conda environments.
cpip() {
    ERROR_MSG="Not in a conda environment."
    ERROR_MSG="$ERROR_MSG\nUse \`source activate ENV\`"
    ERROR_MSG="$ERROR_MSG to enter a conda environment."

    [ -z "$CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV" ] && echo "$ERROR_MSG" && return 1

    ERROR_MSG='Pip not installed in current conda environment.'
    ERROR_MSG="$ERROR_MSG\nUse \`conda install pip\`"
    ERROR_MSG="$ERROR_MSG to install pip in current conda environment."

    [ -e "$CONDA_PREFIX/bin/pip" ] || (echo "$ERROR_MSG" && return 2)

    PIP="$CONDA_PREFIX/bin/pip"
    "$PIP" "$@"
}

I see a lot of good answers here, but I still wanted to share mine that worked for me, especially if you are switching from pip-era to conda-era. Following this, you can install any packages using both conda and pip.

Background

• PIP - Python package manager only
• Conda - Both package and environment manager for many languages, including Python

Install Pip by default every time you create a new conda environment

# install pip for your newly created environment
conda create -n my_new_env pip 

# activate your new conda environment
conda activate my_new_env

# now you can install any packages using both conda and pip
conda install package_name

#or
pip install package_name

This gives you the flexibility to install any packages in conda environment even if they are not available in conda (e.g. wordcloud)

conda activate my_new_env

# will not work as wordcloud is not available in conda
conda install wordcloud

# works fine
pip install wordcloud

For those wishing to install a small number of packages in Conda with pip then using,

sudo $(which pip) install <insert_package_name>

worked for me.

Explanation

It seems, for me anyway, that which pip is very reliable for finding the Conda environment pip path to where you are. However, when using sudo, this seems to redirect paths or otherwise break this.

Using the $(which pip) executes this independently of the sudo or any of the commands and is akin to running /home/<username>/(mini)conda(3)/envs/<env_name>/pip in Linux. This is because $() is run separately and the text output added to the outer command.

All the previous answers are mainly based on the use of virtualenv. I just have a fresh installation of Anaconda 3 and don't have any virtualenv installed in it. So, I have found a better alternative to it without wondering about creating virtualenv.

If you have many pip and python version installed in linux, then first run below command to list all installed pip paths.

whereis pip

You will get something like this as output.

pip: /usr/bin/pip /home/prabhakar/anaconda3/bin/pip /usr/share/man/man1/pip.1.gz

Copy the path of pip which you want to use to install your package and paste it after sudo replacing /home/prabhakar/anaconda3/bin/pip in below command.

sudo /home/prabhakar/anaconda3/bin/pip install <package-name>

This worked pretty well for me. If you have any problem installing, please comment.

If you're using the Windows OS, open an Anaconda prompt and type activate yourenvname.

And if you're using Mac or Linux OS, open a terminal and type source activate yourenvname.

yourenvname here is your desired environment in which you want to install the pip package.

After typing the above command, you must see that your environment name is changed from base to your typed environment yourenvname in the console output (which means you're now in your desired environment context).

Then all you need to do is a normal pip install command, e.g., pip install yourpackage.

By doing so, the pip package will be installed in your Conda environment.

All you have to do is, activate you environment:

conda activate <environment-name>

Then install pip, if pip or pip3 not found in the environment

conda install pip

Use pip or pip3 as

pip3 install <package-name>

Given the information described in this Anaconda blog post, I think the best practice would be to create an environment file so that your Conda environments can be created predictably.

I tried a few of the answers posted here without success and I didn't feel like messing around with python paths etc. Instead, I added an environment.yml file similar to this:

name: your-environment-name
channels:
  - defaults
dependencies:
  - python=3.9.12
  - requests=2.28.1
  - pandas=1.4.4
  - pip=21.2.4
  - pip:
    - python-dotenv==0.19.2

This guarantees that you install all Conda dependencies first, then install pip in the Conda environment and use it to install dependencies that are unavailable through Conda. This is predictable, reusable, and follows the advice described in the blog post.

You then create a new Conda environment using the file with this command:

conda env create -f environment.yml

Depends on how did you configure your PATH environmental variable. When your shell resolves the call to pip, which is the first bin it will find?

(test)$ whereis pip
pip: /home/borja/anaconda3/envs/test/bin/pip /home/borja/anaconda3/bin/pip

Make sure the bin folder from your anaconda installation is before /usr/lib (depending on how you did install pip). So an example:

(test) borja@xxxx:~$ pip install djangorestframework
....
Successfully installed asgiref-3.2.3 django-3.0.3 djangorestframework-3.11.0 pytz-2019.3 sqlparse-0.3.1

(test) borja@xxxx:~$ conda list | grep django
django                    3.0.3                    pypi_0    pypi
djangorestframework       3.11.0                   pypi_0    pypi

We can see the djangorestframework was installed in my test environment but if I check my base:

(base) borja@xxxx:~$ conda list | grep django

It is empty.

Personally I like to handle all my PATH configuration using .pam_environment, here an example:

(base) borja@xxxx:~$ cat .pam_environment
PATH DEFAULT=/home/@{PAM_USER}/anaconda3/bin:${PATH}

One extra commet. The way how you install pip might create issues:

• You should use: conda install pip --> new packages installed with pip will be added to conda list.

• You shodul NOT use: sudo apt install python3-pip --> new packages will not be added to conda list (so are not managed by conda) but you will still be able to use them (chance of conflict).

Well I tried all the above methods. None worked for me because of an issue with the proxy settings within the corporate environment. Luckily I could open the pypi website from the browser. In the end, the following worked for me:

1. Activate your environment
2. Download the .whl package manually from https://pypi.org/simple/<package_name>/
3. Navigate to the folder where you have downloaded the .whl from the command line with your environment activated
4. perform: pip install package_name_whatever.whl

I was facing a problem in installing a non-Conda package in Anaconda. I followed the most-liked answer here, and it didn't go well (maybe because my Anaconda is on the F: drive and environment created was on the C: drive, and the bin folder was not created; I don't have any idea, but it didn't work).

According to Anaconda, pip is already installed (which is found using the command "conda list" on the Anaconda prompt), but pip packages were not getting installed, so here is what I did. I installed pip again and then pip installed the package.

conda install pip
pip install see

see is a non-Conda package.

I had the same issue when I was installing the packages using pip command in Anaconda environment. It was saying the package is already installed but it was not installed in the Anaconda environment instead in the system-wide packages. I face it when I was using the ssh connection to the server.

Here is the one line solution that works like magic:

$(which python) -m pip install <package-name>

There is no need to perform extra installations and settings the paths. By adding $(which python) -m before pip will work everything as per expectations.

Enjoy.

If you only want to have a Conda installation, just remove all of the other Python paths from your PATH variable.

Leaving only:

C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3
C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\Scripts
C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\Library\bin

This allows you to just use pip install *, and it will install straight into your Conda installation.

I know the original question was about conda under MacOS. But I would like to share the experience I've had on Ubuntu 20.04.

In my case, the issue was due to an alias defined in ~/.bashrc: alias pip='/usr/bin/pip3'. That alias was taking precedence on everything else.

So for testing purposes I've removed the alias running unalias pip command. Then the corresponding pip of the active conda environment has been executed properly.

The same issue was applicable to python command.

I've looked at this answer and many other answers for hours today and couldn't figure this out with 30 years programming experience.

I ran:

conda create -n myenv python=3.9
conda activate myenv

and could not use pip. However, in another environment such as myenv2, myenv3, myenv4 it worked.

I was obtaining the dreaded urllib3 httpsconnection error.

So thought it has to be a missing urllib3 error or something else. It turns out that it was much more sinister than that. Unfortunately it works in other environments and for me I thought that it was related to the fact I'm using Debian on Windows 10 with WSL2. The fix was simple:

rm -rf $HOME/.cache

The pip cache was mangled from a previous install of the same environment. Probably due to the fact I had run an update on conda base and done a distribution upgrade. Because I'm wanting to run a production system with apache2 using a WSGI environment with flask, I want to always have the same conda instance name. So this was a must fix!

I tried to install pycorenlp with Anaconda Prompt. However, it did not work for me. So, I installed pip using conda install pip. Then I executed pip install pycorenlp, and it worked.

Uninstall the duplicated python installation. Just keep anaconda and create an env with the desired python version as specified here: https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-python.html. Then your python and pip versions will change as you switch between envs.