Upgrade From Early cx Versions

Use this guide when you installed an early cx release before the conda-ship-based runtime split and want to move to the current conda-express release.

What Changed

Current cx releases bootstrap the managed conda prefix at:

~/.conda/express

Early releases used ~/.cx. Upgrading the cx binary does not rewrite or migrate that old prefix. The first run of the new binary creates a fresh managed prefix at ~/.conda/express; the old ~/.cx directory remains until you remove it.

Important

Keep ~/.cx until you have recreated or archived any environments you still need. cx uninstall removes the current managed prefix, not old early-release state.

Upgrade The Binary

Install a current cx binary with one of the supported release channels. Current conda-express releases are built with conda-ship and are distributed through Homebrew, the installer scripts, GitHub Releases, Docker, and PyPI. New releases are no longer published to crates.io. Common local-binary upgrade paths are below.

Homebrew

brew update
brew upgrade cx

Installer Script

curl -fsSL https://jezdez.github.io/conda-express/get-cx.sh | sh

On Windows:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://jezdez.github.io/conda-express/get-cx.ps1 | iex"

PyPI

python -m pip install --upgrade conda-express

Old Cargo Install

If you installed an early release with cargo install, remove that old binary and then choose one of the supported install methods above:

cargo uninstall conda-express

This removes the Cargo-installed cx executable. It does not remove the old ~/.cx prefix.

Check the binary version:

cx --version

On macOS and Linux, also check which binary your shell finds:

command -v cx

On Windows PowerShell:

Get-Command cx

If that still points at an old Cargo install, for example under ~/.cargo/bin or %USERPROFILE%\.cargo\bin, remove the old binary or adjust your PATH before continuing.

Bootstrap The New Prefix

Run:

cx bootstrap
cx status

The status output should show ~/.conda/express unless you intentionally used the runtime --path option.

Move Environments You Still Need

If your old ~/.cx prefix contains named environments you still use, export and recreate them deliberately.

For a portable environment file:

~/.cx/bin/conda env export --from-history -n myenv > myenv.yml
cx env create -n myenv -f myenv.yml

For an exact same-platform package specification:

~/.cx/bin/conda list --explicit -n myenv > myenv-spec.txt
cx create -n myenv --file myenv-spec.txt

On Windows, the old conda executable is typically under:

$HOME\.cx\Scripts\conda.exe

Use that path in place of ~/.cx/bin/conda in the commands above.

Note

Do not point the new cx runtime at ~/.cx as a migration shortcut. Current releases use runtime ownership metadata to avoid mutating prefixes that were created by another runtime generation.

Remove The Old Prefix

After the environments you need are available under the new prefix, remove the old early-release prefix manually.

macOS and Linux:

rm -rf ~/.cx

Windows PowerShell:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force "$HOME\.cx"

Then use the current runtime:

cx create -n myenv python=3.12
cx shell myenv