Anaconda Hacks (for ActivitySim… sort of)
Anaconda is making me hate Python a little less… only a little. If I’m going to work with ActivitySim (which I am), it’s necessary.
1 The first hack is setting MKL_NUM_THREADS automatically. According to this page, it should be set to one thread to avoid things going nuts (that’s a technical term). Doing this is pretty easy, since Anaconda is setup to run all the scripts in a folder upon activation (there’s a deactivation folder too). To get to this, open the Anaconda prompt and activate the appropriate workspace. Then type echo %conda_prefix%. Copy (highlight and right-click) the resulting path and paste into a Windows Explorer Window. Navigate to etc – conda – activate.d. Make a file (e.g. asr-activate.bat) – this is a Windows batch file that will run when the workspace is activated.
In this batch file, add MKL_NUM_THREADS=1 (note: NO SPACES AROUND THE EQUALS SIGN!). This will set that when the workspace is activated.
2 Another hack in that same file is sending the command line to your working directory (I have a workspace for each client, since we sometimes have to use different versions of ActivitySim or other packages), so I added (each on their own line) D: and cd D:\Projects\Clients\FavoriteClient\Tasks\asim_setup. Now, when I open the Anaconda Shell and activate that workspace it automatically sends me where I want to be.
In the case that I needed to unset that MKL_NUM_THREADS, navigating ‘up a level’ and to deactivate.d (%conda_prefix%\etc\conda\deactivate.d), you can make a deactivate script (e.g. asr-deactivate.bat) and use MKL_NUM_THREADS= and it will clear the variable when the workspace is deactivated.
Note: There are probably several files already in the activate.d and deactivate.d folders, and you might notice that there’s a bunch of .sh files. These are for Linux (and probably MacOS). They work the same way, but I didn’t mess with them because I’m running on a Windows 10 computer.
Tags: activitysim, python
