How to access predefined environment variables in conda environment.yml?

Question

I wish to share an environment.yml file for others to reproduce the same setup as I have. The code we use depends on the environment variable $PWD. I wish to set a new env variable in the environment.yml where I can access $PWD.

for eg. I am able to do:

variables:
  VAR1: something

but can't do

variables:
      VAR1: $PWD/solution

where $PWD is set based on where the user has cloned the repo.

Also, how do I update predefined environment variables such as $PYTHONPATH?

variables:
    PYTHONPATH: $PWD:$PYTHONPATH

doesn't work similarly.

Answer 1

I faced similar issue while accessing gitlab variables within environment.yml. I didnt find any solution on internet and finally i had to follow below in my gitlab-ci.yml's script section:

• create conda environment using yml file
• activate environment
• create variables using conda env config vars set VAR=value
• deactivate environment
• activate environment