Installing perl modules on a conda environment produce changes out of the environment?

Question

[v.berriosfarias]

Hello just want to make sure if I'm not commiting any significant change on the server that I'm using:

I installed perl via conda recipe: conda install perl

then for installing x program I need to add a new module called LWP:Simple

so I oppened the perl shell (I suppose that this is the perl shell) via perl -MCPAN -e shell command

at this point, when I install any perl module under that shell, does the installed modules produce any change on the server far beyond disk usage? or it only commit changes on the perl script that I have installed on my conda environment?

Answer 1

[Philipp Bayer]

You can check using which perl - it should give you the perl that's located within your conda environment. In this case, it should install things into your conda-directory.

When you install packages via cpan it will also print the folder perl is installing the package into.

If you want to be extra-sure, you can also install most Perl packages via conda. Replace the ':' by '-', lower-case everything, and add 'perl-' to the beginning. In your case,

conda install -c bioconda perl-lwp-simple

this will definitely install into conda.

[ATpoint]

You can also explicitely deactivate the conda base environment by conda deactivate, then everything should install as if conda was not present at all.

Avoiding autoactivation of conda base upon terminal startup can be achieved by:

echo 'auto_activate_base: false' >> $HOME/.condarc

[v.berriosfarias]

heyy didnt know that I can handle perl module installation using conda, thanks!!

[Philipp Bayer]

No worries! it works similar for R-packages (conda install r-optparse), but the renaming is not always straightforward. I usually end up googling 'packagename conda' for the correct name.