I do physics work and I'm not that knowledgeable in computer stuff, so I'm sorry if this question is rather dumb.
I just installed Julia. I've been using Python for a long time for data analysis and I have various packages installed using Miniconda, including matplotlib. Because of that, I installed IJulia and PyPlot in Julia. When I opened up notebook and entered using PyPlot, it seemed like it was installing several packages that I already had. The output was printing things like:
The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:
cycler pkgs/main/win-64::cycler-0.10.0-py38_0
icu pkgs/main/win-64::icu-58.2-ha925a31_3
jpeg pkgs/main/win-64::jpeg-9b-hb83a4c4_2
kiwisolver pkgs/main/win-64::kiwisolver-1.3.1-py38hd77b12b_0
matplotlib pkgs/main/win-64::matplotlib-3.3.4-py38haa95532_0
matplotlib-base pkgs/main/win-64::matplotlib-base-3.3.4-py38h49ac443_0
pillow pkgs/main/win-64::pillow-8.1.2-py38h4fa10fc_0
pyqt pkgs/main/win-64::pyqt-5.9.2-py38ha925a31_4
qt pkgs/main/win-64::qt-5.9.7-vc14h73c81de_0
tk pkgs/main/win-64::tk-8.6.10-he774522_0
tornado pkgs/main/win-64::tornado-6.1-py38h2bbff1b_0
When I went to my .julia folder, I found a "conda" folder that seemed like an exact copy of my Miniconda folder, so I deleted this.
Then I found Conda.jl and I thought I should first install that in Julia. After that, I thought I could just immediately see my Conda environments (I only have one, which is the home environment) by entering Conda.list() but the console started saying
[ Info: Downloading miniconda installer ...
[ Info: Installing miniconda ...
I keyboard-interrupted this. When I tried run('conda create -n conda_jl python conda') I got the message "ERROR: IOError: could not spawn `conda create -n conda_jl python conda`: no such file or directory (ENOENT)". So at this point I'm not sure what I should do.
I suppose my immediate question is, is there a way to have PyPlot (the Julia one) call the matplotlib package that I already have from my previous Miniconda installation, and not install anything new? All help would be very appreciated! Thank you!
EDIT: I realized, I haven't deleted my conda folder yet in my .julia folder.
By standard Julia uses its own Python installation that is located by default in ~/.julia/conda/3 where ~ is your home folder.
To change that youn need to tell Julia to use other Python installation:
using Pkg
ENV["PYTHON"]="/path/to/python/binary"
Pkg.build("PyCall")
Basically using the inbuilt Julia is always easier so if you have problems running such configuration you can always revert:
using Pkg
ENV["PYTHON"]=""
Pkg.build("PyCall")