I’m always using the Homebrew to install developement dependencies. Recently, I need Anaconda for learning python developments. So the first step is trying to install Anaconda with homebrew via brew cask install anaconda, but get this warn information while installing:

Cask anaconda installs files under /usr/local. The presence of such files can cause warnings when running "brew doctor", which is considered to be a bug in Homebrew-Cask.

To fix this bug, you need to add the /usr/local/anaconda3/bin to the PATH environment variable. Simply run this command in the terminal:

# if you're using bash
echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

# if you're using zsh
echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc

On newer macOS such as bigSur, zsh is now the default shell application.

Then, reload system variables and initialise conda:

source ~/.bash_profile
conda init

# or... if you're using zsh
source ~/.zshrc
conda init zsh

conda init is available in conda versions 4.6.12 and later.

All done! Anaconda will configure the environment automatically for you. Example of configurations (~/.zshrc) on my Mac looks like this after execute the above command:

# >>> conda initialize >>>
# !! Contents within this block are managed by 'conda init' !!
__conda_setup="$('/usr/local/anaconda3/bin/conda' 'shell.zsh' 'hook' 2> /dev/null)"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    eval "$__conda_setup"
else
    if [ -f "/usr/local/anaconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" ]; then
        . "/usr/local/anaconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh"
    else
        export PATH="/usr/local/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"
    fi
fi
unset __conda_setup
# <<< conda initialize <<<

The same works for miniconda. If you installed it using Homebrew with brew install --cask miniconda, you need to set source of the PATH to .zshrc, for example.

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/miniconda3/bin"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

conda init zsh

That’s it, miniconda will set coresponding configurations automatically.

Update conda

If you run conda update --all for the first time, it may warn:

Verifying transaction: - WARNING conda.core.path_actions:verify(962): Unable to create environments file. Path not writable.
  environment location: /Users/<username>/.conda/environments.txt

To fix this issue, we can change the ownership of the ~/.conda directory with:

sudo chown -R $USER ~/.conda

conda update --all

If you come across other issues, please leave your comments below…