Is the conda tool installed in the base environment or out of it?

When I try to update conda, I was told to execute conda update -n base conda, does this mean that the conda tool is installed in the base environment? Or the conda tool is installed out of any environment?

Answer

Yes. On all typical¹ distributions it is always installed in the base environment.² One can check all environments with the conda package installed with:

conda search --envs conda

It is possible to be installed elsewhere, in addition to base, but the base copy will be the default when not available in the currently activated environment.

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_{[1]: Anaconda, Miniconda, and Miniforge variants.}

_{[2]: In older Anaconda installations, base was previously termed root.}