Miniconda is a platform independent python environment that is easily configured with python and pip support without the need of root user.

A use case maybe you do not have root access or takes a very long time to get certain devops/cloud/automation tooling to be available for you and you need to get to work 'fast'.

From miniconda website: https://conda.io/docs/user-guide/install/index.html

NOTE: You do not need administrative or root permissions to install Anaconda if you select a user-writable install location.

I chose to use miniconda and not virtualenv (which requires to be on the server to begin with and installed with root user privileges and after using it extensively it's very clunky and very selective on environment variables/$PATH) miniconda does not require such permissions.

For further reading check out this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374804

Time to get you up and running about 7 minutes.

The following is for my needs and works on CentOS 7.4 (64bit) OS

Get into my home directory and create directory

cd ~
pwd
mkdir -p miniconda && cd miniconda

Download and install into my directory

MINICONDA_VERSION=latest
wget https://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/Miniconda2-${MINICONDA_VERSION}-Linux-x86_64.sh \
&& chmod 755 Miniconda2-${MINICONDA_VERSION}-Linux-x86_64.sh \
&& ./Miniconda2-${MINICONDA_VERSION}-Linux-x86_64.sh -b -p ~/miniconda2

Download default condarc and autoswitching (when entering a directory)

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jimsmith/miniconda/master/.condarc -O ~/.condarc \
&& wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jimsmith/miniconda/master/conda_auto_env.sh -O ~/conda_auto_env.sh \
&& chmod 755 ~/conda_auto_env.sh

Update my bashrc

cat <<EOF >>~/.bashrc
#
# 01/03/2018 - added Minicoda2 path
export PATH=~/miniconda2/bin:$PATH
#
# 01/03/2018 - added conda autoswitching
source ~/conda_auto_env.sh
EOF

Activate without logging out

source ~/.bashrc

Update conda to latest version

which conda
conda update conda

Setup autoswitching

mkdir -p ~/miniconda/awscli/ \
&& cd ~/miniconda/awscli/ \
&& wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jimsmith/miniconda/master/environment.yml

If you experience message of -bash: PROMPT_COMMAND: readonly variable then check that this is not been set elsewhere for example in /etc/bashrc

Now create my miniconda environment with Python 2.7 for the python interpreter

conda create --yes --quiet --name awscli python=2.7 pip
  

Tip: to activate the environment manually:

source activate awscli

(awscli) [jim@centos7 miniconda]$ pwd
/home/jim/miniconda/awscli

Next install the programs I need from latest-requirements.txt

(awscli) [jim@centos7 miniconda]$ pip install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jimsmith/miniconda/master/latest-requirements.txt

Bonus points confirming they are installed.

(awscli) [jim@centos7 miniconda]$ ansible --version
(awscli) [jim@centos7 miniconda]$ aws --version

Update my bashrc

cat <<EOF >>~/.bashrc
#
# 01/03/2018 - added aws autocomplete
complete -C '~/miniconda2/envs/awscli/bin/aws_completer' aws
#
EOF

Next go and configure Ansible's EC2 Dynamic Inventory

https://github.com/jimsmith/miniconda/blob/master/CONFIGURE_ANSIBLE_EC2.md