bug#10980: GNU bugs information: logs for bug#10980

[Noam Postavsky <npostavs@users.sourceforge.net>]

severity 10980 wishlist
quit

> From: "Bo Johansson" <bo.johansson <at> lsn.se>
> To: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz <at> gnu.org>
> Cc: 10980 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Subject: Re: bug#10980: 23.4; Variable initial-environment incorrectly set
> Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:56:44 +0200
>
> My idea to get a read-only "inherited environment" is:
> 1) To save the "inherited environment" early in "c-code" at start up of
> Emacs
> 2) Implement a lisp function which can return the saved "inherited
> environment".
>
> The new read-only "inherited environment" can then later be used to start
> external processes with a more "transparent" environment.
> To start to change the current handling of the variable initial-environment
> is probably difficult and error prone.
>

I read this as a feature request to let lisp programs be able to see
the environment from before Emacs startup routines have changed it. I
have an additional use case for this: in magit it would be useful to
see if the user has HOME or if they just let Emacs choose a default
value for it.  In the latter case, I would pop up a warning to tell
them not to do that because git chooses a different default value
HOME, and having disagreement causes confusion (of the "why does X
work from command line and not in magit?" variety).