On Windows, calling Python sys.executable or console scripts run as .exe may fail with

Fatal Python error: _Py_HashRandomization_Init: failed to get random numbers to initialize Python

The issue arises when environment variables are passed in via the env= argument to Python subprocess. In general, one should add or overwrite variables to the OS environment in subprocess calls as follows in this example for using Clang and Flang compilers. os.environ returns a mapping (general form of dict) of environment variables.

import os
import subprocess

# get a Mapping of all the current environment variables
env = os.environ

# set these to use Clang and Flang compilers
myvar = {'CC': "clang", 'CXX': "clang++", 'FC': "flang"}

# %% This is important--add / overwrite environment variables for this subprocess only.
env.update(myvar)

subprocess.check_call(['meson', 'setup'], env=env)

Whenever using Python subprocess environment variables, generally pass in all the existing environment variables, adding or overwriting the specific variables needed. Otherwise, fundamental environment variables will be missing and the subprocess call generally won’t work. By default, when not specified, env=None, which tells subprocess to copy all the environment variables of the shell Python was called from.