The environment is inconsistent, please check the

Question

I tried to update or install new packages from anaconda and lately, this message has appeared:

The environment is inconsistent, please check the package plan carefully
The following package are causing the inconsistency:

   - defaults/win-32::anaconda==5.3.1=py37_0

done

I tried with conda clean --all and then conda update --all but it persists.

Conda Info

active environment : base
    active env location : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum
            shell level : 1
       user config file : C:\Users\NAME\.condarc
 populated config files : C:\Users\NAME\.condarc
          conda version : 4.6.11
    conda-build version : 3.17.7
         python version : 3.7.3.final.0
       base environment : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum  (writable)
           channel URLs : https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/win-32
                          https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/noarch
          package cache : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum\pkgs
                          C:\Users\NAME\.conda\pkgs
                          C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Local\conda\conda\pkgs
       envs directories : C:\Users\NAME\Continuum\envs
                          C:\Users\NAME\.conda\envs
                          C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs
               platform : win-32
             user-agent : conda/4.6.11 requests/2.21.0 CPython/3.7.3 Windows/10 Windows/10.0.17763
          administrator : False
             netrc file : None
           offline mode : False

Answer 1

The command conda install -c anaconda anaconda did the trick for me. For my setup, I need to specify the channel otherwise it would not work. After running the command in the terminal, I was prompted to update a list of packages that was found to be inconsistent. Without this step, I was not able to install or update any packages with conda install <package_name> or conda update <package_name respectively.

Answer 2

I had faced the same problem. Simply running

conda install anaconda

solved the problem for me.

Answer 3

Given a situation like the following,

> conda update -c intel --all
Collecting package metadata: done
Solving environment: |
The environment is inconsistent, please check the package plan carefully
The following packages are causing the inconsistency:

  - intel/win-64::ipython==6.3.1=py36_3
  - intel/win-64::prompt_toolkit==1.0.15=py36_2
done

As mentioned in other answers, the idea is to have some sort of re-installation to occur for the inconsistent packages.

Thus, with a few copy-&-paste's, you could:

> conda install intel/win-64::ipython==6.3.1=py36_3
Collecting package metadata: done
Solving environment: /
The environment is inconsistent, please check the package plan carefully
The following packages are causing the inconsistency:

  - intel/win-64::ipython==6.3.1=py36_3
  - intel/win-64::prompt_toolkit==1.0.15=py36_2
done

## Package Plan ##

  environment location: c:\conda

  added / updated specs:
    - ipython


The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:

  jedi               intel/win-64::jedi-0.12.0-py36_2
  parso              intel/win-64::parso-0.2.0-py36_2
  pygments           intel/win-64::pygments-2.2.0-py36_5
  wcwidth            intel/win-64::wcwidth-0.1.7-py36_6


Proceed ([y]/n)? y

Preparing transaction: done
Verifying transaction: done
Executing transaction: done

(and you would have to repeat for all the packages)

---

My “Shortcut”

Alternatively, cook up an (ugly) one-liner (this should work for Windows as well as other platforms)

Note: by "ORIGINAL_COMMAND", I'm referring to any command that gives you the error message (without any other side-effects, ideally)

<ORIGINAL_COMMAND> 2>&1 | python -c "import sys,re,conda.cli; conda.cli.main('conda','install','-y',*re.findall(r'^\s*-\s*(\S+)$',sys.stdin.read(),re.MULTILINE))"

Expanding the above one-liner:

from re import findall, MULTILINE
from sys import stdin
from conda.cli import main

main(
    "conda", "install", "-y",
    "--force",  # Maybe add a '--force'/'--force-reinstall' (I didn't add it for the one-liner above)
    *findall(r"^\s*-\s*(\S+)$", stdin.read(), MULTILINE)  # Here are the offenders
)