I am trying to understanding the use of Conda within an Arcgis Pro desktop installation (version 3.1).
I'll start with a general comment:
There are a bewildering number of ESRI pages describing this: how to install Anaconda, MiniConda, Clone,...
but frankly, as so often seems to be the case with ERSI's documentation, the pages don't seem to flow together
in some sort of logical progression.
So for my specific questions which are simple:
1. When I "clone" a new Conda environment by cloning an existing copy, am I getting an exact copy of that existing environment? I would have thought yes, but a recursive diff seems to show otherwise, and the documentation seems to imply that in the new env I need to install ESRI arcgis package (conda install -c esri arcgis) (BTW the documentation shows variously conda install -c esri arcgis=<version>. What version?
2. Suppose I activate the environment, either from a command window or from ARcGIS Pro GUI. Does that activation actually change the file system and hence subsequent invocations of ArcGIS Pro, new command line windows shell, .. whatever, or does the new environment only persist during the session in which the activation is invoked (as would be the case, for instance, if all that happened within the particular session is that some environment variables were changed, shuffled around)