Installing a python package that is not available in anaconda (smtplib)

Question

I'm using anaconda on linux and I want to install smtplib to send mail. I have tried,

conda install smtplib which returned:

PackageNotFoundError: Package missing in current linux-64 channels: - smtplib , and,

pip install smtplib which returned:

Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement smtplib (from versions: ) No matching distribution found for smtplib

I found that smtplib comes by default in the standard python distribution and I wonder why it is not available in anaconda.

Question: How to install smtplib? Or more generically, how to install a package that is not included in anaconda?

There are similar questions here and here but without any answers.

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Spec: Python 2.7.13 |Anaconda 4.3.1 (64-bit)| (default, Dec 20 2016, 23:09:15) [GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-1)] on linux2

Answer 1

First, the real environment manager is conda, and anaconda is actually a collection of generally used packages for scientific calculation, so it is not necessary for creating an environment.

Second, smtplib is a built-in package for both python2.7 and python3.x, so there is no need for installation. You can import it without installing any other package.

Finally, what source activate <venv name> really does is that modify your environment variables in the current console. That also means change the path of command python and pip and the path where the python program looks for installed modules. In a word, source activate <venv name> activate a separated environment for python.