[Python-Dev] Why is spawnp not available on Windows? (original) (raw)

Shane Holloway (IEEE) shane.holloway@ieee.org
Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:47:46 -0600

Ok, so here's my story. I got curious as to why the various spawnp were not available on Windows. The conclusion I came to is that only "spawnv" and "spawnve" are exported by posixmodule.c, and os.py creates the other variants in terms of these functions. However, the "spawnvp" and "spawnvpe" python implementations are dependant upon the availablity of "fork".

So, after all that, I looked in standard library header file for process.h and found function prototypes for the various _spawn functions. Would it make sense to add support for "spawnvp" and "spawnvpe" to posixmodule.c? Should it be guarded by the existing HAVE_SPAWNV, new HAVE_SPAWNVP, or by MS_WINDOWS definitions?

Or, has someone already tried this with lessons learned?

Thanks, -Shane