# Activation of conda environments from Far Manager

I've switched back to Windows on work recently. Turned out I am too attached to [Far Manager](https://www.farmanager.com/)(these days Far is even greater with [ConEmu](https://conemu.github.io/)). If you are a developer on Windows and you do not know about this stuff, go check it out. It is fantastic. Scott Hanselman has a nice [post](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ConEmuTheWindowsTerminalConsolePromptWeveBeenWaitingFor.aspx) about it.

I am also more into python development these days. Which (for me) means usage of conda and it's environments. Anaconda developers suggest that on Windows one should start a special *Anaconda Propmt*. I would like to be able to activate environments straight from Far. Sounds easy: just be sure to be able to run conda. However once I do
```shell
conda activate new-env
cona env list
```
I observe that environment has not been changed. Environment activation is basically a modification of environment variables.
Here is how it looks like:
![conda_not_working.gif](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1649429582239/Mvo9hqbdf.gif)

The reason for such behavior is that Far spans a new CMD process for every command. So in our case `conda activate new-env` will be a new process, which will modify environment variable, but these changes will die once process is ended.

[FarCall](https://plugring.farmanager.com/plugin.php?pid=823&l=en) plugin for the rescue. This plugin allows one to call a batch file and imports environment variables to Far process. Neat. Once you have the plugin in place, you can activate the environment like this:
```bash
call:conda activate new-env
```

Note that this won't change the command propmpt. But we can fix this too. I did it through Far Manager settings for the command propmpt (`Options -> Command line settings -> Set command line prompt format`). *Set the value to* (see **UPDATE 2** about it):
```bash
%CONDA_PROMPT_MODIFIER%$p$g
```

And the last bit to it, you actually have to go and create a user-scoped environment variable `CONDA_PROMPT_MODIFIER` and make it non-empty. I assigned it a single space. I observed that empty `CONDA_PROMPT_MODIFIER` will result in command propmpt that will print the name of the environment variable instead of printing nothing.

Here is the result:
![conda_working-1.gif](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1649429617338/EkBKonF0D.gif)


Happy coding!
![farconda-1.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1649429625530/ElEh4_zSP.png)


**UPDATE**
This won't work with deactivation. During deactivation conda's script does things like this:
```
@SET CONDA_PREFIX=
@SET CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV=
@SET CONDA_PROMPT_MODIFIER=
```

which besically removes environment variables. When it is time for FarCall to enumerate environment variables, there are no `CONDA_PROMPT_MODIFIER`, so FarCall does not propagate the empty value (or reset). Sigh!

**UPDATE 2**
Somehow I overlooked that one can use `PROMPT` environment variable instead of `CONDA_PROMPT_MODIFIER`. It is better because then Far will work nicely not only with conda, but with Pipenv (in case you use it). So define an environment variable `PROMPT` and set command line format in Far to `%PROMPT%`. My default value for `PROMPT` is `$p$g`.