It is possible to invoke a particular environment’s Python executable when providing the full path of the environment’s python executable. However, will you get the same behavior as if you used the activate command to activate the enviornment before invoking it? Is there something that activate command performs, that will not be performed when invoking the python exe directly?
Here is a link to the docs that explains conda environment activation in more detail: Managing environments — conda 24.7.2.dev36 documentation
Thanks for the link. I read through it. I didn’t notice any mention of the following, so I should ask just to be sure. I assume that when invoking an environment’s python exe directly without first activating the environment, an automatic activation of the environment is not performed on the caller’s behalf, that is equivalent to the caller using the activate command prior to invoking Python using the full path of the environent’s python exe, correct?
That conda documentation says “These activation scripts are how packages can set arbitrary environment variables that may be necessary for their operation”. I don’t know how much it happens in practice that a package wants special environment variables. With a regular “venv” type environment, directly invoked Python will look in the right places and that’s how I use it.
I still have not seen it said whether or not invoking an environment’s python exe directly(without a preceding activate command) is exactly the same as preceding a python invocation with the desired activate command. Pleae correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Larry is saying that invoking an env’s python exe directly can get some things configured, such as search paths relative to the environment’s python exe that was invoked, but without using the activate command, there may be some packages within the environment that will not get their setup scripts executed(which would get executed by the activate command).
In neither conda nor a venv is simply invoking python exactly the same as calling activate, for example with venv the activate script will clear the PYTHONHOME variable if it’s set, but I don’t have set and I invoke Python directly. conda supports putting scripts in etc/conda/activate.d/ which will be executed when the environment is activated. If the question is simply whether running the python.exe “is exactly the same as” using the activate script, no it’s not exactly the same.