getdefaultlocale returning None when running sync.db on Django project in PyCharm

Question

OSX 10.7.3, PyCharm version 2.5 build PY 117.200 I'll run through how I get the error: - I start a new project - Create a new VirtualEnv and select Python 2.7 as my base interpreter (leave inherit global packages un-ticked) - Click Install and choose Django v1.4 - Select `Django` project type - Tick `Enable Admin` - Open `settings.py` and add `sqlite3` to `DATABASES:ENGINE` - Run `sync.db` - Get to the point of creating a database superuser - locale error The problem seems to be that getdefaultlocale() method is not returning anything (well, None). ``` return getpass.getuser().decode(locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]) TypeError: decode() argument 1 must be string, not None ``` However if I enable the virtualenv `workon MyApplication` and run `python` with the following code: ``` Python 2.7.2 (default, Feb 7 2012, 23:16:02) [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 3.0 (tags/Apple/clang-211.10.1)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import locale >>>…

Accepted Answer

Basically the reason this occurs is that PyCharm doesn't, by default, have access to environmental variables.

I've found 3 solutions to this problem:

Set a global environmental variable, using the link CrazyCoder suggests in the comments to this question.

Run PyCharm from a terminal window by changing to the PyCharm application directory and running `./pycharm` (possibly create a symlink in your PATH to make this less inconvenient)

Open PyCharm preferences, browse to `Console > Django Console`, type in your required environmental variables as you would in your bash profile e.g. `LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8`

I'd suggest the 3rd way as most elegant, although it's annoying that variables aren't loaded by default.

getdefaultlocale returning None when running sync.db on Django project in PyCharm

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