Environment variables#

Read by conda-completion#

CONDA_COMPLETION_SHELL: Overrides shell auto-detection. Accepts a shell name (fish) or full path (/usr/local/bin/fish). Takes priority over process tree detection and SHELL. PowerShell aliases such as pwsh are normalized to powershell. Useful when automatic detection fails or in scripted environments.
CONDA_COMPLETION_CACHE_DIR: Overrides the directory that stores completion.msgpack, versions.index, versions.store, and context_cache.msgpack. Use this in CI, containers, or locked-down environments where the platform user cache directory is not appropriate. Set it consistently when running generate, install, init, and status. The conda completion --cache-dir PATH command-line option takes precedence over this environment variable.
SHELL: Fallback for shell detection when process tree walking does not find a known shell. Defaults to powershell on Windows if not set.
CONDARC: Path to a custom .condarc file. The Rust completer reads this (in addition to ~/.condarc) for channel name completion. On Windows, C:\ProgramData\conda\.condarc is also checked when present.
HOME (Unix) / USERPROFILE (Windows): Locates user-level files: ~/.conda/environments.txt, ~/.condarc, and ~/.conda/global/global.toml.
HOMEDRIVE / HOMEPATH: Windows fallback when USERPROFILE is not set.

Rust completer#

The binary (_conda_completer) gets its configuration from command-line arguments (manifest path, shell name), not conda-completion-specific environment variables. CONDA_COMPLETION_CACHE_DIR affects the manifest path passed to the binary by conda completion init; the binary does not read that variable directly. It reads HOME/USERPROFILE and CONDARC for global context resolution.

Standard conda variables#

Not specific to conda-completion, but relevant:

CONDA_CHANNELS: Overrides configured channels. Affects which packages appear in the manifest when conda completion generate extracts repodata.

Cache paths#

By default, all data lives in the platform’s user cache directory (via platformdirs):

Platform	Path
Linux	`~/.cache/conda/completion/`
macOS	`~/Library/Caches/conda/completion/`
Windows	`%LOCALAPPDATA%\conda\cache\completion\`

Set CONDA_COMPLETION_CACHE_DIR to use a different directory, or pass conda completion --cache-dir PATH for a single command.

See Manifest format for the files stored there.