Page 256 - Beginning Programming with Pyth - John Paul Mueller

apply bug fixes. The problem with updates is that they can cause your application to work incorrectly, or sometimes not at all if you're depending on a broken behavior. However, it’s generally a good idea to keep packages updated if for no other reason than to apply security- related bug fixes. Of course, you need to know that the package requires updating. To find outdated packages, you use the conda search -- outdated command, followed by the name of the package you want to check.
If you want to check all of the packages, then you simply leave the package name off when performing your search. Unfortunately, at this point the output becomes so long that it’s really tough to see anything (assuming the majority doesn’t just scroll right off the screen buffer). Using the conda search --outdated --names-only command helps in this case by showing just the names of the packages that require updating.
Afteryouknowwhatyouneedtoupdate,youcanusetheconda update command to perform the task. For example, you might want to update the NumPy package, which means typing conda update numpy and pressing Enter. Few packages are stand-alone, so conda will present a list of items that you need to update along with NumPy. Type y and press Enter to proceed. Figure 11-14 shows a typical sequence of events during the update process.