PyCharm terminal doesn't activate conda environment

Question

I have a conda environment at the default location for windows, which is C:\ProgramData\Anaconda2\envs\myenv. Also, as recommended, the conda scripts and executables are not in the %PATH% environment variable. I opened a project in pycharm and pointed the python interpreter to C:\ProgramData\Anaconda2\envs\myenv\python.exe and pycharm seems to work well with the environment in the python console, in the run environment, and in debug mode.

However, when opening the terminal the environment is not activated (I made sure that the checkbox for activating the environment is checked). To be clear - when I do the same thing with a virtualenv the terminal does activate the environment without a problem.

Here are a few things I tried and did not work:

• Copied the activate script from the anaconda folder to the environment folder
• Copied the activate script from the anaconda folder to the Scripts folder under the environment
• Copied an activate script from the virtualenv (an identical one for which the environment is activated)
• Added the anaconda folders to the path

None of these worked. I can manually activate the environment without a problem once the terminal is open, but how do I do it automatically?

Answer 1

This seems to be a known issue.

Answer 2

I ran into the same problem and used this solution.

1. Go to File -> Settings -> Tools -> Terminal.

2. Replace the value in Shell path with cmd.exe "/K" C:\path\to\Anaconda3\Scripts\activate.bat your_environment_name.

If I installed Anaconda in C:\Anaconda3 and have an environment named myenv, then my settings would look like this:

Answer 3

If any one wondering for settings for Linux, here is how to do it. Create a file .pycharmrc in your home dir. Open the file and add following

source ~/.bashrc
source ~/anaconda3/bin/activate your_env_name 

Now go to Pycharm File > Settings > Tools > Terminal > Shell path replace your shell path with /bin/bash --rcfile ~/.pycharmrc.

Now when you open your terminal specified conda env will activate.

Answer 4

Expanding on darksinge's answer to accommodate for conda>=4.4 and multiple environments, if 1) your conda environments and projects share the same name and 2) you keep your projects in the same directory, you can use this workaround:

cmd.exe "/K" C:\path\to\Anaconda3\Scripts\activate.bat C:\path\to\Anaconda3 & activate %cd:C:\path\to\project\parent\directory\=%

The last part (%cd:C:\path\to\project\parent\directory\=%) should infer the project name from the current working directory. For example, I keep my projects in Z:\, so %cd:Z:\=% returns my project name. You can read more at: How to replace substrings in windows batch file

Answer 5

Here's my solution for MacOS or Linux users:

First, add this to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshrc depends on your shell. Remember to put it after conda has been initialized:

##### Activate conda env ######
[[ -n $CONDA_ENV ]] && conda activate $CONDA_ENV

And then go to your PyCharm settings, go to Tools -> Terminal In Project Settings, add CONDA_ENV=yourenv to your Environment Variables

yourenv is the env name from your conda for this specific project