Canopy Command Prompt or Terminal

On the Tools menu you will find an item labeled either “Canopy Command Prompt” (Windows) or “Canopy Terminal” (Mac OS or Linux). This tool will launch a native Command Prompt window or Terminal window, in which the currently active Canopy Python environment is set to be the default Python (on your PATH environment variable).

The most common use of this window is to support the command-line installation of packages which are not listed in the Package Manager, for example using pip, easy_install, or “python setup.py”. Note that this will usually work for older Windows .msi or .exe package installers, which reference the Windows registry, because Canopy registers its Python environments in the registry. However, for Canopy 2.0 through 2.1.0, if you create such an environment manually via the edm command, then it will not be registered.

This window is also useful for running ipython terminal or notebook, or any command-line Python tools, scripts or applications which you wish to run from an OS command line. These scripts will run in active Canopy Python environment, just like scripts run in the Canopy Editor’s Python shell, and will have access to all the packages installed in that environment, whether installed in the Package Manager or from the command line.