custom POETRY_CONFIG_DIR doesn't seem to create a config directory with config.toml as intended,

[Abhinav-Upadhya-ni]

Hello there!

so I'm using POETRY_CONFIG_DIR in my subprocess call to install poetry, where I'm passing needed env variables.

subprocess.check_call(cmd, env = {**os.environ, "POETRY_HOME": str(<poetry_home_path>), "POETRY_CONFIG_DIR": str(another_path)})

it still uses %appdata%/pypoetry/ and not create my custom poetry_config_dir, while POETRY_HOME seems to work fine,
am I missing something here?

poetry version : 2.1.3

[SirHegel]

POETRY_CONFIG_DIR is supported in 2.1.3, but the environment in the snippet only exists inside the installer subprocess. It does not modify the parent Python process or any later poetry process. POETRY_HOME appears to work because the installer itself consumes it; POETRY_CONFIG_DIR is consumed later by the Poetry executable.

There is a second subtlety: installing Poetry does not create config.toml. The 2.1.3 documentation says that file is created the first time the poetry config command runs: https://github.com/python-poetry/poetry/blob/2.1.3/docs/configuration.md#L14-L18. The runtime selects the directory directly from POETRY_CONFIG_DIR: https://github.com/python-poetry/poetry/blob/2.1.3/src/poetry/locations.py#L15-L18.

Reuse the same environment for installation and every Poetry invocation (or set it in the parent environment):

poetry_env = {
    **os.environ,
    "POETRY_HOME": str(poetry_home_path),
    "POETRY_CONFIG_DIR": str(another_path),
}

subprocess.check_call(installer_cmd, env=poetry_env)
subprocess.check_call(
    [str(poetry_executable), "config", "--list"],
    env=poetry_env,
)

That second command creates <another_path>/config.toml. If a later call omits env=poetry_env, Poetry correctly falls back to %APPDATA%\pypoetry on Windows. Also use an absolute another_path; unlike shell expansion, Path(os.getenv("POETRY_CONFIG_DIR")) does not expand a literal %APPDATA% or ~ for you.

So this is not a separate installer/config-directory bug: it is process-local environment scope plus the config file being created lazily.