I am not allowed admin access, but I really want to be able to use pro's Conda environment. Currently my only option is to run another Conda install, but in theory, can't I clone the Pro environment to a folder have access to?
Conda suggests this:
Error: Missing write permissions in: C:\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\Python
#
# You don't appear to have the necessary permissions to update packages
# into the install area 'C:\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\Python'.
# However you can clone this environment into your home directory and
# then make changes to it.
# This may be done using the command:
#
# $ conda create -n my_arcgispro-py3 --clone=C:\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\Python\envs\arcgispro-py3
but if I try it I get an error message:
PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: 'C:\\ArcGIS\\Pro\\bin\\Python\\nvs\\my_arcgispro-py3'
Is this possible?
Currently it's not supported, we are moving towards enabling that sort of environment creation as soon as possible but there has been a lot to change behind the scenes, since many different parts of Pro use Python in different ways. Currently the env needs to be within the Pro folder structure to find all the pyd/DLL files that arcpy needs to initialize. If all goes according to plan this should be fixed for 2.1.
Currently you can use the 'prefix' switch on conda create (-p) to clone the env somewhere outside the Pro folder structure, but will have to ensure the system PATH variable includes all of the locations of the DLLs to successfully import arcpy, but its not something we're officially supporting since its a bit of a hack.