Fixing conda's fish wrapper (as of conda v4.4.10)

conda_fish.md

Problem

After updating conda to version 4.4.x, the fish shell wrapper intended to define a conda function that knows the path of the conda executable and calls it regardless of whether the Anaconda/Miniconda installation is in $PATH. For me, this fails with

⋊> ~ conda activate base
fish: Unknown command 'shell.fish'
- (line 1):
begin; shell.fish activate base
       ^
from sourcing file -
	called on line 60 of file /usr/local/Cellar/fish/2.7.1/share/fish/functions/eval.fish

in function 'eval'
	called on line 67 of file /usr/local/share/anaconda/etc/fish/conf.d/conda.fish

in command substitution
	called on line 65 of file /usr/local/share/anaconda/etc/fish/conf.d/conda.fish

in function 'conda'
	called on standard input
	with parameter list 'activate base'

Solution

Insert -g before the path variables for the conda executable and its root directory are defined

set -g _CONDA_EXE "[/your/path/to/anaconda]/bin/conda"
set -g _CONDA_ROOT "[/your/path/to/anaconda]"

Details

The standard conda installation installs its fish wrapper as follows (from /conda/utils/functions.sh):

mkdir -p "$prefix/etc/fish/conf.d/"
rm -f "$prefix/etc/fish/conf.d/conda.fish"
echo "set _CONDA_EXE \"$conda_exe\"" > "$prefix/etc/fish/conf.d/conda.fish"
echo "set _CONDA_ROOT \"$prefix\"" >> "$prefix/etc/fish/conf.d/conda.fish"
cat "$src_dir/conda/shell/etc/fish/conf.d/conda.fish" >> "$prefix/etc/fish/conf.d/conda.fish"