@brettcannon @Microsoft/pvsc-team
Lets discuss over Teams or similar (too complicated to do over GitHub messages).

Here's what i found (researched on Windows and Mac):

Activation of conda environments must be done using conda activate <env-name>
We currently activate it using source activate <env-name> (see issue Activating a conda environment using conda instead of source #1882), this needs to change.

Conda no in path:

We cannot use <full path to conda exe> activate <env-name>
When you do this, you get an error from conda indicating the fact that the shell has not been initialized for conda.
The requirement is to run the conda shell activate scripts

Solution:

We need to run two commands now:
conda activation script && conda activate <env-name>

What is the activation script for conda?

On mac for Ananconda the activation script is /Users/donjayamanne/anaconda3/bin/activate
On Mac, the above script is in the bash_profile.
On windows, its some batch file (can't remember).
On Windows, one needs to launch the Anaconda Prompt (command prompt with the necessary startup script - does not work on Powershell).
In both Windows and Mac, the conda activation script, is located where ever base root or Conda is installed.
E.g. if you install Anaconda using pyenv, then the activation script is located here:
/Users/donjayamanne/.pyenv/versions/anaconda3-4.4.0/bin/activte

Discussion

Do we need to support the old ways of activating conda environments (for users with older versions of conda)? I think yes, else all of a sudden things just stop working for people.
The biggest challenge will be in identifying the root conda environments.

Be able to activate conda environments when conda is not on PATH #2266

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