I wanted to mention something that came up recently in Ubuntu, where
lsb_release is a Python 3 script. This isn't specific to Python 3, since
Python 2 scripts can also be affected.
The Launchpad bug is symptomatic of the more general problem:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lsb/+bug/938869
When you write system scripts like 'lsb_release' that use /usr/bin/python{,3}
in the #! line, please remember to include -Es switches. This prevents the
crash in question, where a VMware installer script was mucking with
$PYTHONHOME for its own purposes, with the side effect of breaking Python's
search for its stdlib. The bug notices it in lsb_release first, and we fixed
that in Ubuntu, but any other Python-based system script that the VMware
script would have called would also be broken.
This doesn't requires a mass freakout, but it might be useful for a mass bug
filing (of non-urgent priority, I think). I don't have time before UDS-R to
look into that, so I at least wanted to send this email to put it on the
radar. Here is what the switches do (from python -h):
-E : ignore PYTHON* environment variables (such as PYTHONPATH)
-s : don't add user site directory to sys.path; also PYTHONNOUSERSITE
Using -E fixed the immediate bug, but I think it is generally useful to
include -s also, so as to avoid any potential breakage of system scripts by
things users may have added locally.
Cheers,
-Barry
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