Add Anaconda Python installation issues topic?

[EastBayEv]

Adding another long-winded anecdote to our (undocumented?) lore for Anaconda Python installation failures...

I recently installed miniconda via reticulate in a virtual environment to use tensorflow and keras in RStudio (1.4.1103, R version 4.0.3) on a 2020 MacBook pro running BigSur 11.2.1, 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4. This also required installation of Java Developer Kit (15.0.2), which, perhaps because Python 2 is still a dependency on a lot Mac systems (why is this?), forced my PATH to Python 2.7.16 and prevented any command-line Anaconda functionality from working. This also caused the Navigator app to stop working completely.

Thus, I could not uninstall or reinstall Anaconda because of the lack of command-line conda functionality without first uninstalling some potentially precious bin/ files and trying to sudo chmod my bash profile (not recommended), but I still could not uninstall/reinstall Anaconda. I tried everything from manual removal of all anaconda and python files, resetting the PATH variable, creating new virtual environments, etc. but still no luck.

It turns out that only the complete removal of the JDK that I had installed for the reticulate R package solved this. For whatever reason, it appears that the JDK installation forced the PATH to link to Python 2.7.16 permanently, but these files were gone because I had mistakenly deleted them, thus leaving me with executable links to nowhere. Removal of JDK appears to have reset these links. While I still don't have command-line functionality, Python and R kernels opened via the Navigator app work just fine. Fun times!