PYTHONPATH not set when running profiler

Issue Report Checklist

• Searched the issues page for similar reports
• Read the relevant sections of the Spyder Troubleshooting Guide and followed its advice
• Reproduced the issue after updating with conda update spyder (or pip, if not using Anaconda)
• Could not reproduce inside jupyter qtconsole (if console-related)
• Tried basic troubleshooting (if a bug/error)
  • Restarted Spyder
  • Reset preferences with spyder --reset
  • Reinstalled the latest version of Anaconda
  • Tried the other applicable steps from the Troubleshooting Guide
• Completed the Problem Description, Steps to Reproduce and Version sections below

Problem Description

It seems like the PYTHONPATH set in Spyder is not used when profiling. This causes a bit of issues if one is profiling library code.

Except for the behavior not being as expected, the following code:

import os
try:
    user_paths = os.environ['PYTHONPATH'].split(os.pathsep)
except KeyError:
    user_paths = []
print(user_paths)

results in [] in the profiler output (despite PYTHONPATH being non-empty in the dialog).

Maybe related to: #12564 #9388 #3161 (I commented there as well, but not sure it is the same problem).

What steps reproduce the problem?

1. Add a module to PYTHONPATH in the Spyder dialog
2. Profile code that relies on that module

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

That the PYTHONPATH is set in the profiler.

Paste Traceback/Error Below (if applicable)

PASTE TRACEBACK HERE

Versions

• Spyder version: 4.1.5 and 5.0.0.dev0 62e0dfe
• Python version: 3.7.9 64-bit
• Qt version: 5.9.6
• PyQt5 version: 5.9.2
• Operating System: Windows 10

Dependencies

# Mandatory:
atomicwrites >=1.2.0        :  1.4.0 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0             :  3.0.4 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0         :  1.6.0 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0        :  1.7.2 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111 :  20200713 (OK)
intervaltree                :  None (OK)
IPython >=4.0               :  7.18.1 (OK)
jedi =0.17.2                :  0.17.2 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0             :  6.0.7 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0            :  1.1.0 (OK)
paramiko >=2.4.0            :  2.7.2 (OK)
parso =0.7.0                :  0.7.0 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0             :  4.8.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4           :  0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3                :  5.7.2 (OK)
pygments >=2.0              :  2.7.1 (OK)
pylint >=1.0                :  2.6.0 (OK)
pyls >=0.35.0;<1.0.0        :  v4.0.0b2+5278.g62e0dfe (OK)
qdarkstyle >=2.8            :  2.8.1 (OK)
qtawesome >=0.5.7           :  1.0.1 (OK)
qtconsole >=4.7.7           :  4.7.7 (OK)
qtpy >=1.5.0                :  1.9.0 (OK)
rtree >=0.8.3               :  0.9.4 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6              :  3.2.1 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=2.0.0dev0  :  2.0.0.dev0 (OK)
watchdog                    :  None (OK)
zmq >=17                    :  19.0.2 (OK)

# Optional:
cython >=0.21               :  0.29.21 (OK)
matplotlib >=2.0.0          :  3.3.1 (OK)
numpy >=1.7                 :  1.19.1 (OK)
pandas >=1.1.1              :  1.1.3 (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0              :  1.5.2 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3               :  1.8.dev (OK)

[ccordoba12]

Hey @oscargus, thanks for reporting. I know what’s happening in this case and we’ll fix the underlying problem in our next version (4.2.0) to be released in November.

For now, I think you can avoid it by dropping PYTHONPATH from the terminal where you plan to start Spyder.

[ccordoba12]

No, there’s no workaround and the profiler is using the same interpreter that Spyder is running on.