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The anaconda metapackage is a version-locked collection of the packages included in an Anaconda Distribution installer. Each version of the metapackage corresponds to a specific installer release, so installing a metapackage version recreates the package set from that release. This makes the metapackage a tool for reproducibility: if your code behaves differently between releases of Anaconda Distribution, you can recreate the environment from a specific release to debug the difference. To recreate the package set from a specific installer release, run the following command:
You can also use the metapackage to get the package set from a release with a different version of Python. Anaconda Distribution installers are each built for a single Python version, but the metapackage lets you override it:
Version-locked packages (also called pinned packages) are tied to a specific version of their software. Conda does not update pinned packages when resolving dependencies if other packages in the environment are added or modified. Because each package in the metapackage is pinned, any attempt to update the environment will almost certainly result in build conflicts. However, it is still possible to install the anaconda metapackage and update the environment that contains it. For more information, see Updating a metapackage environment.
The anaconda metapackage was removed from Anaconda Distribution installers in February of 2023 and no longer appears in your base environment by default.

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Installing the metapackage

Installing the anaconda metapackage requires conda. If you do not have conda installed, find an install guide for your OS. If you plan to install the anaconda metapackage, Anaconda recommends that you create an environment specifically for that metapackage first:
  1. Open (Terminal on macOS/Linux).
  2. Create a new environment by running the following command:
  3. (Optional) Search for metapackage versions available for install by running the following command:
  4. Install the anaconda metapackage or specify a metapackage version by running one of the following commands:
If you want the Anaconda Distribution package set without version pins, install the _anaconda_depends package instead of the anaconda metapackage:
The _anaconda_depends package references the same packages as the metapackage but does not pin their versions, so you can freely install and update packages in the environment. Anaconda Distribution installers include _anaconda_depends in the base environment for this reason.

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Updating a metapackage environment

If you have an environment containing the anaconda metapackage and need to update packages in that environment, you must first unpin the package versions in your environment. This is accomplished by installing the anaconda=custom version of the metapackage:
  1. Open (Terminal on macOS/Linux).
  2. Open the environment containing the metapackage you want to update:
  3. Install the custom version of the anaconda package using the following command:
  4. Install or update packages as necessary. For more information on managing packages, see Managing packages in the conda documentation.