Anaconda will no longer update after 2.0.3, 2.1.1, 2020.07

Product Help Anaconda Navigator
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I’ve been using Anaconda pretty heavily since 2016 and while it does run on three different machines for stable tests… not one of them will update for two or three years now. I tried earlier this week and it ran for hours and hours just saying ‘updating package on root’ They are all MacOs, ranging from HighSierra, Catalina, Mojave, BigSur and I’m not even going to touch Monterey. Most of my code is updating old code, documenting old repos and 3.7 is as far back as i will go but its getting absurd that Anaconda can’t update itself.

My /opt folders are 46gb, 41gb and 43 gb, this is getting out of hand. Yes I work in complicated projects but that is Microsoft Word and Excel level of bloat.

I posted the stack trace from both attempts to do a clean install and both failed. Here is that link

So the instructions from anaconda/install/ update-version/ say that I’ve got to go through my bash_profile to delete them… why am I doing that? Why is anaconda expecting its own users do debug its own detailed software, isn’t that their job? I’m not being sarcastic for its own sake but puzzled and frustrated, rather genuinely asking why I have to do this level of detail, when I load an app it installs itself and maybe some ancillary files are left over. Anaconda is like a packrat of everything, I had five different folders to remove outside of /anaconda and /opt. Why are there so many?

Since Anaconda 2.0.3, and 2.1.1… which goes back to 2016, since then not one instance of Anaconda will update itself to the new version so I have to take hours and hours to delete its spider webs of weird installs on each machine. Then reinstall, and load dozens of python projects to test out what random little segment of code was missed. Anaconda3-2022.05 nope wont install, Anaconda3-2021.03 will install but won’t run updater at all. Anaconda3-2021.05 will install but won’t update newer packages and won’t run with pycharm. 2020.07-MacOSX-x86_64.pkg will install and update but crashes regularly.

Then I see that Anaconda only offers python 3.9 and above on the latest version which is a deal breaker as I work with a ton of code that still needs to be updated past python 3.7. It really feels like there was a bunch of classes and setup meetings that I missed because anaconda either works brilliantly or it crashes and nothing will run. So I need to visit the archive to find one that supports python 3.7 and above to find this page… that tells me what os but no mention of what version of python. Index of /

Is this normal or has Anaconda just (started hiring people who, or always) expect us the users to debug their code? I’m a bit salty as I’ve had to delete and reinstall Anaconda on three machines four times this year. So I’m the person who loved and recommended Anaconda to many clients but it just seems they don’t or can’t seem to be able to support their own code base. GitHub for conda has over 1,000 issues which is a lot and anaconda has over 2,000 issues, which begs the question. Why?

Three machines at two hours each, times four times this year and its only July so it will be at least another two this year so 3x2x4x2x$180 hr = $8640 in lost billable because anaconda doesn’t or can’t get an update button to update. 1,000 people on GitHub have similar problem with conda, and 2,000 have issues with anaconda.

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It would seem that @Dan_Meador has addressed some of this and is aware of the issue. Navigator will not upgrade to newer version - #7 by Dan_Meador

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I was experiencing similar issues with updating, removing and re-installing Anaconda Navigator and I found the simplest solution to just get the GUI up and running on StackOverflow: Anaconda GUI Install-Update Fix using CLI. I have experienced similar issues even with Windows 11, but this was a quick fix if the GUI doesn’t open. One bug I have noticed is the GUI doesn’t enable you to ‘right-click → update’ packages anymore, just simply ‘left-click → update available → apply’. This always used to work in previous versions. The package updates don’t always work in the GUI but often I find the ‘pip install <package_name> --update’ command works in the prompt which is one work-around.

I guess the ‘conda install anaconda-clean’ followed by ‘anaconda-clean --yes’ may work but I think you need to be in the C:\Users\name\anaconda3\Scripts path before it’ll work, which most users fail to explain.