Environment Variable `${env:HOME}` not being recognized in `.env` file when setting PYTHONPATH

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

• VS Code Version: 1.68.1
• OS Version: Ubuntu 20.04

Steps to Reproduce:

mkdir python-test && cd python-test
echo "import a" >> main.py 
echo "PYTHONPATH=\$HOME/python-test/external" >> .env 
mkdir external && cd external
touch a.so

open python-test folder with vscode, click main.py, click F5, we get an error

Exception has occurred: ModuleNotFoundError
No module named 'a'

However, if I update .env to PYTHONPATH=/home/jasjuang/python-test/external, I get the expected error

Exception has occurred: ImportError
/home/jasjuang/python-test/external/a.so: file too short

This seems to indicate that vscode is unable to parse the environment variable $HOME in the .env file correctly. I also observe the same problem on macOS, where vscode is unable to parse the environment variable $USER in the .env file correctly.

Is it possible to fix it so that the environment variables are parsed correctly? It would be nice to be able to share the .env file among different machines.

[fabioz]

@karrtikr @karthiknadig this doesn’t really seem related to debugpy (the management of environment variables is not really done at the debugger, rather, it’s done in vscode-python which launches the debugger).

[karrtikr]

Sorry for all the confusion, debugger doesn’t work due to a bug https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/18572. But other features should ideally be working. You can verify this:

• Try setting python.logging.level to debug in User settings, and install the pre-release version of the extension:

• The Python output should contain something like Dump environment variables where you can see PYTHONPATH should be printed as you expect.

Closing as dup of https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/18572