Provide an API to return the custom environments variables

[DonJayamanne]

The current API getEnvironmentVariables does not return just the custom variables, it returns the resolved environment variables. My assumption was that this returns just the custom env variables.

The Jupyter extension needs a way to get just the custom env variables (not all of the env variables from the process)
E.g. if there is no .env file, then undefined would be returned, if there is just one env variable in the env file, then we get back a JS object with just that key and the corresopnding value.
This is required as we need to merge these with the activated environment variables

E.g.g assume we want to run Python, then we get the activated env variables for an env, then we merge that with the custom env variables. However this is no longer possible as the custom env variables contains everything (as I assumed the api would return only the custom vars).

The merging needs to happen in Jupyter extension as users could have a kernel spec that has custom env variables as well,
& the Jupyter extension today merges the env variables from the following 3 sources:

• Python Env
• Kernel Env
• .env file

Happy to have a chat about this.

[karrtikr]

getEnvironmentVariables returns a merge of process env vars and custom vars as you stated.

This is required as we need to merge these with the activated environment variables

Activated environment variables (assuming you get this from the Python extension) already contains both the process env and custom vars as well, as acquiring it requires printing all env vars anyways. So explicit merge with .env file isn't even required.

Lastly, we're not sure why merge cannot happen even if the list of env vars contain everything, can you clarify?

[DonJayamanne]

Activated environment variables (assuming you get this from the Python extension) already contains both the process env and custom vars as well, as acquiring it requires printing all env vars anyways. So explicit merge with .env file isn't even required.

Thanks that addresses one problem

Thanks I think I can work with this.