Stuck at Solving Environment on Anaconda

Question

I am running OSX Catalina. After downloading Anaconda, I'm having trouble downloading external packages. I tried in both the GUI and the terminal, but the process keeps getting stuck at "Solving environment".

I understand creating a new environment can be a workaround, but I would rather fix the issue at hand.

Any ideas?

Solution 1

The following steps may work to resolve the issue.

conda config --remove channels conda-forge
conda config --add channels conda-forge

if it doesn't work then try this

conda update conda

if nothing works try seeing this github solution, it worked for many.

Solution 2

use this:

conda config --set channel_priority strict

pay attention that it is channel_priority and not priority_channel

Solution 3

running

conda config --set channel_priority flexible

worked for me

Update, still ran into some issues so I found Mamba, and oh my god my life changed conda is the worst package manager ever

all my issues were solved when I used mamba

# install mamba
conda install -n base conda-forge::mamba
# use mamba
mamba install pandas

Solution 4

Please, check that python is actually listed in environment.yml or conda create -n your_environment --file requirements.txt python=3.7. Otherwise, conda is traversing all versions of python available. Check that Python is listed.

Solution 5

I had similar problems trying to install external packages such as graph-tools and I solved it by creating a new environment. I know you prefer other options but it's the only thing that worked for me.

View more solutions

Comments

[Johnson Sam]

Tried both and they didn't work. Do I need to change the file path to a specific path to make these downloads? Currently just at /Users/myname

[Johnson Sam]

I just tried that, and it works but the solution for that is basically just creating a new environment, which I feel is more of a workaround that an actual fix. I don't understand why I am facing this issue as my old macbook worked fine without needing to create a new environment

[Jatin Mehrotra]

try this conda config --set channel_priority strict,did it work? or even this add these paths to my environment variables: C:\Anaconda3 C:\Anaconda3\Library\mingw-w64\bin C:\Anaconda3\Library\usr\bin C:\Anaconda3\Library\bin C:\Anaconda3\Scripts change path according to your directory paths

[Johnson Sam]

I changed the channel priority to strict and to flexible but both still didn't work. I don't understand how to add paths to the environment variables. Also I'm using MacOS

[Johnson Sam]

It seems like the issue has to do with conda because I can install packages fine using pip

[AMC]

conda config --remove channels conda-forge Is OP using conda-forge in the first place?

[Rubi Shnol]

'conda-forge' is not in the 'channels' key of the config file

[avivr]

In case it helps someone: This solved my "Solving Environment take forever" problem, but I also had to re-order the list of channels in my environment.yml file. I put conda-forge first, then package-specific channels like pytorch, then put defaults last. From the docs it seems that this causes conda to skip searching in the low-priory channels once a package is found in a high-priority channel, thus shrinking the search-space, but then the channel order matters very much.

[Jared Still]

Thank you! That fixed the issue for me, on a brand new Python install.

[rsmith54]

I hit this issue trying to install mamba unfortunately :/

[Nihir]

Had to wait over an hour to get Mamba installed (thanks Conda 🙄) - but its speed is life changing!