Re: [BUG] conda doesn't work in ob-shell sessions

[Jack Kamm]

Jack Kamm <jackkamm@tatersworld.org> writes:

> IMO breaking conda is a pretty major regression, as conda is a critical
> tool in many areas of scientific computing, including in my own
> workflows.  Although I was never a major ob-shell user, I did
> occasionally find it useful albeit buggy. But I've stopped using it
> altogether over the past year because of this change.

Sorry, it turns out I was badly misremembering things, and overly
harsh here.

In particular, going back to older commits on 9.5 and 9.6, ob-shell was
always horribly mangled with conda, and not very useable. So I was
wrong to say the current implementation is a regression.

Actually, it seems like current version of ob-shell (on both main and
bugfix) works _better_ with conda than before -- as long as the shell
session is started with "M-x shell", instead of with
`org-babel-execute-src-block'. In particular, Ihor's commit f2949d4d1
was particularly helpful in making ob-shell play more nicely with conda.
That commit was added to bugfix around Org 9.6.4.

The reason conda doesn't work well when session is started via
`org-babel-execute-src-block' is because of the way the prompt is
set. However, when session is started by "M-x shell", ob-shell doesn't
mess with the prompt so much, and conda seems to work smoothly. Using
"M-x shell" to start the session seems like an acceptable workaround to
me, especially considering how conda never worked well with ob-shell
before.