import gdal clobbering PATH environment variable on Ubuntu

[Thingus]

Problem description

On import, gdal prepends "[env]\Library\bin;" to PATH, breaking any subprocesses that depend on that path.

Steps to reproduce the problem.

>>> import os
>>> os.environ["PATH"]
'/home/john/miniconda3/envs/eoenv/bin:/home/john/miniconda3/bin:....'
>>> import gdal
>>> os.environ["PATH"]
'/home/john/miniconda3/envs/eoenv\\Library\\bin;/home/john/miniconda3/envs/eoenv/bin:/home/john/miniconda3/bin...'
>>> 

Operating system

Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit

GDAL version and provenance

GDAL 2.3.3 version from from conda ( py36hbb2a789_0)
Python 3.6.8

[Thingus]

Workaround:

import gdal
os.environ["PATH"] = os.environ["PATH"].split(';')[1]

[rcoup]

@Thingus I can't find anything that sets PATH in the codebase, either via os.environ or setenv()/putenv()

This is under master (via the Trusty/Linux vagrant dev environment):

vagrant@gdal-vagrant:~$ python
Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 23 2017, 15:49:48)
[GCC 4.8.4] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> os.environ['PATH']
'/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games'
>>> import gdal
>>> os.environ['PATH']
'/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games'
>>> gdal.VersionInfo()
'2050000'

This is under 2.3.x on another Ubuntu host:

$ ipython
Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 13 2018, 12:45:42)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 1.2.1 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details.

In [1]: import os

In [2]: os.environ['PATH']
Out[2]: '/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/db/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin'

In [3]: import gdal

In [4]: os.environ['PATH']
Out[4]: '/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/db/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin'

In [5]: gdal.VersionInfo()
Out[5]: '2030200'

That would suggest it's something anaconda-related?

[rouault]

Neither the GDAL library nor the Python bindings of upstream GDAL touch the PATH. Must be something anaconda-related indeed. Should be reported to their bug tracker.

[ensafi]

Neither the GDAL library nor the Python bindings of upstream GDAL touch the PATH. Must be something anaconda-related indeed. Should be reported to their bug tracker.

Are there different versions of GDAL out there? The GDAL 2.3.2 Python bindings (using Python 3.6 under Anaconda3) has an "osgeo/__init__.py" that starts as follows and does indeed modify PATH:

# __init__ for osgeo package.

# making the osgeo package version the same as the gdal version:
import os
import sys
if not '%s\Library\bin' % (sys.prefix) in os.environ['PATH']:
    os.environ['PATH'] = r'%s\Library\bin;%s' % (sys.prefix, os.environ['PATH'])

Notice that it simply appends "\Library\bin;" to the PATH entry matching sys.prefix, without checking to see if the host system is Windows.

[rouault]

This is not the content of the official file provided by GDAL: https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/blob/master/gdal/swig/python/osgeo/__init__.py

[ensafi]

Thank you, I see that now, and I have reported it to the Anaconda team. Looks like distribute patched versions of libraries.