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Issue warning when the we can't find a valid standard library during path initialization #145273

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Issue warning when the we can't find a valid standard library during path initialization#145273
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interpreter-core(Objects, Python, Grammar, and Parser dirs)(Objects, Python, Grammar, and Parser dirs)type-featureA feature request or enhancementA feature request or enhancement
@FFY00

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@FFY00
FFY00
opened on Feb 26, 2026
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Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Currently, if we don't find the standard library, we fail with an obscure message.

$ PYTHONHOME=nonsense ./python -c 'print("foo!")'
Fatal Python error: Failed to import encodings module
Python runtime state: core initialized
Exception ignored in the internal traceback machinery:
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'traceback'
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'encodings'

Stack (most recent call first):

This is a common problem, as can be seen with a quick google search. One of the top results is a nonsense AI slop blogpost.

It is generally caused or a misconfigured Python home directory, either by setting PYTHONHOME, or by broken virtual environments.
It would be helpful to show a warning if we are unable to find a valid standard library during initialization.

WARN: Could not find the standard library directory! The Python 'home' directory was set to 'nonsense', is this correct?
Fatal Python error: Failed to import encodings module
Python runtime state: core initialized
Exception ignored in the internal traceback machinery:
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'traceback'
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'encodings'

Stack (most recent call first):

Bad ._pth files can also cause this.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

No response given

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response

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    interpreter-core(Objects, Python, Grammar, and Parser dirs)(Objects, Python, Grammar, and Parser dirs)type-featureA feature request or enhancementA feature request or enhancement

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