[FIXED] Anaconda Environment Installing Packages Numpy-Base

Issue

After having installed a few packages and the TensorFlow package updates with conda install, when running the command conda list I see that have two numpy packages:

1. numpy-base

2. numpy

   numpy 1.14.3 py35h9bb19eb_2
   numpy-base 1.14.3 py35h7ef55bc_1

Questions:

1. Why do I have two numpy versions?
2. which one is being used and why got numpy-base package even installed?

Solution

numpy, here, is an example of a metapackage, while numpy-base is the original numpy library package.

When a conda package is used for metadata alone and does not contain any files, it is referred to as a metapackage. The metapackage may contain dependencies to several core, low-level libraries and can contain links to software files that are automatically downloaded when executed. Metapackages are used to capture metadata and make complicated package specifications simpler.

The structure of a conda package is as follows, a metapackage only contains the info folder.

.
├── bin
│   └── f2py
├── info
│   ├── LICENSE.txt
│   ├── files
│   ├── index.json
│   ├── paths.json
│   └── recipe
└── lib
    └── python3.x

If you look at meta.yaml file of numpy, it, in fact, has a comment saying

numpy is a metapackage that may include mkl_fft and mkl_random both of which require numpy-base to build.

Read more about conda packages.

Answered By - kHarshit