Anaconda Maintenance

Updating Anaconda environments and packages is not always obvious. Here are some guidelines.

conda update anaconda

updates the full anaconda installation to the main tree. This appears to update the packages itself, but does not update which packages are linked into the various conda environments.

conda update numpy=1.9 --all

will carry out the all updates, with the caveat that the "numpy" package is held at version 1.9. The dependencies seem to be handled correctly, ie if numpy 1.10 is also available, other packages depending on numpy will not be updated to a newer version linked against 1.10.

The above commands operate on the default anaconda environment. To do the same with other environments, try e.g.

conda update -n py27root5 root=5 numpy=1.9 --all

which will update packages in the py27root5 environment, keeping root at version 5 and numpy at version 1.9, plus managing their dependencies correctly within the environment.