I can create a new conda environment, with program biopython with this:
conda create --name snowflakes biopython
What if I do not want to install any program? It seems I can not do that:
» conda create --name tryout
Error: too few arguments, must supply command line package specs or --file
You can specify one or more default packages to install when creating
an environment. Doing so allows you to call conda create without
explicitly providing any package names.
To set the provided packages, call conda config like this:
conda config --add create_default_packages PACKAGE_NAME
You can give a package name of just "python" to get a base, empty install.
conda create --name myenv python
conda create --name myenv python=3.4
If you've created a create_default_packages block in your .condarc file, @joelion's answer will install those packages. If you don't want those, use the --no-default-packages flag. For example:
conda create --name myenv python --no-default-packages
To create an environment that is absolutely empty, without python and/or any other default package, just make a new folder in envs directory in your Anaconda installation (Anaconda3 in this example):.
~\Anaconda3\envs>mkdir empy_env
The first time that you activate this environment a directory named Scripts in Windows, bin in Linux, with a few batch files are created. At the time of this post this works for Anaconda version 4.3.30 both in Windows and Linux.
I have noticed that @cel has suggested the same thing in the first comment under the question, but obviously it hasn't got the attention it deserves!
