Package possibly not reading environment variables correctly

[william-chu-github]

I honestly don't know if the problem is with python-oracledb or something else, as I will outline below. The gist of it is that I have some code that needs to connect to an Oracle database, and it is not picking up the path environment variable. This means I have to initialise with oracledb.init_oracle_client(lib_dir = ...), which causes maintenance issues/problems with less technical users. Here's an annoted illustration of my experience.

1. Start a new venv with python -m venv test
2. test\scripts\activate to activate the venv
3. pip install oracledb
4. Start a Python session in a command window

import oracledb
oracledb.init_oracle_client()

5. Everything works fine

Windows 11 Enterprise version 23H2, Python 3.10.11, oracle-db 2.5.1.

Now, I move over to my IDE, Spyder.

1. In a command prompt, set DPI_DEBUG_LEVEL=64 to set up tracing
2. Start and set Spyder to use the new venv
3. Try to initialise the client as before, which errors with this tracing information (notice it doesn't show the full path from the environment variable; just a subdirectory in a user folder):

... Environment Variables:
...     PATH => %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;"

4. But os.environ["PATH"] explicitly includes the directory to the necessary configuration files!
5. Mind-blowingly, if I do os.environ["PATH"] += ";<path_to_oci.dll>", then try oracledb.init_oracle_client()--it now works. The trace will show the full environment path (even down to the duplicated Oracle directory because I did a += to append it when it was already in the path).

Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? Is it a problem with oracledb or perhaps Spyder? The fact that it works in a plain command prompt would indicate that oracledb is working correctly, but then it's not picking up the environment path correctly, when Spyder is.

Thanks for reading.

[anthony-tuininga]

Since oracledb is calling getenv() and not the Windows specific GetEnvironmentVariable() method, that may explain the difference? I don't use Windows generally and have never used Spyder so I don't know what it is doing internally -- and whether there is a discrepancy between getenv() and GetEnvironmentVariable() on Windows in this particular case. If you find out for sure, please advise!

[anthony-tuininga]

It seems that is indeed the case based on some Google searches: curl/curl#4774. Apparently Windows' implementation of getenv() is .... lacking... :-(

[william-chu-github]

Thanks, that might be it. I wasn't able to verify it because I couldn't find a likely spot where getenv() was called (a search of the repo only found it in connect_params.pyx), and at any rate, I think IT blocks us from pulling from GitHub.

I can work around it just be trivially setting os.environ["PATH"] = os.environ["PATH"]. Perhaps it might be helpful for someone to test what OS is running and conditionally use GetEnvironmentVariable() if it's Windows?