[issue27263] Tkinter sets the HOME environment variable, breaking scripts

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy added the comment:

As IDLE maintainer, this annoys me also. IDLE and in particular test_idle necessarily change the environment by calling tkinter.Tk().  When run under test.regrtest, test_idle gets slapped with a warning, and in 3.6, gets labelled a failure, even when it passes.

This issue cuts the other way too.  IDLE works for months and then stops working.  User posts "IDLE stopped working' on Stackoverflow.  In at least some cases, user installed a program that installed ab incompatible tcl/tk and set TCL_LIBRARY (which Python does not).  tk and tkinter get trapped by what for us is a bad setting.

Serhiy, could the _tkinter startup code recover from this and revert to using the one we installed?  Should I open a separate issue?

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components:  -IDLE
nosy: +serhiy.storchaka, terry.reedy
title: IDLE sets the HOME environment variable breaking scripts -> Tkinter sets the HOME environment variable, breaking scripts

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue27263>
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