Issue 1081879: Pydoc can't find browser (bug+solution!) (original) (raw)

I've got Python 2.3 installed on Mandrake Linux 10.1 with KDE 3.2 running. When I run "pydoc -g" and search on any term, if I try to display the relevant documentation, pydoc throws an exception:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.3/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1345, in call return self.func(*args) File "/usr/lib/python2.3/pydoc.py", line 1970, in open webbrowser.open(url) File "/usr/lib/python2.3/webbrowser.py", line 43, in open get().open(url, new, autoraise) File "/usr/lib/python2.3/webbrowser.py", line 38, in get raise Error("could not locate runnable browser") Error: could not locate runnable browser

I did some research and found that the problem is that KDE sets the BROWSER environment variable to an unexpected value: BROWSER='kfmclient openProfile webbrowsing'

The solution would be to test for this strange setting. I patched webbrowser.py on my system in an inelegant fashion by simply inserting the following code at the top of the file, just after the 'import' statements:

#patch for KDE mangling of BROWSER environment variable #per: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2004-September/032060.html

if os.environ.has_key("BROWSER") and \ os.environ["BROWSER"]=='kfmclient openProfile webbrowsing': os.environ["BROWSER"] = 'konqueror' # set it to konqueror