In general you shouldn't need to "activate" a Conda environment in the shell. Things generally "just work" if you use absolute paths. Something like this:
COPY conda.yaml /env/conda.yaml
RUN conda env create -f /env/conda.yaml -p /env/conda
COPY foo.py /env/foo.py
CMD ["/env/conda/bin/python", "/env/foo.py"]
What
is a little funny is installing a consistent version of Conda inside a container, because the official Miniconda installers are rolling-release only. However you might be able to downgrade to your desired version of Conda
after installation.