[Python-Dev] deprecate commands.getstatus() (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Thu Mar 22 22:53:32 CET 2007

Titus Brown wrote:

On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 09:34:46PM +0000, Michael Foord wrote: -> Guido van Rossum wrote: -> > Sure. os.fork() and the os.exec*() family can stay. But os.spawn*(), -> > that abomination invented by Microsoft? I also hear no opposition -> > against killign os.system() and os.popen() -> -> Except that 'os.system' is really easy to use and I use it rarely enough -> that I always have to RTFM for subprocess which makes you jump through -> a few more (albeit simple) hoops.

Hopefully the patch I'm making will change that, no? I could add in a 'system'-alike call easily enough; that was suggested. But I think returncode = subprocess.call("program") is pretty simple, isn't it? Probably. I can just never remember it (I didn't remember it when typing that email). My fault, os.system is just easier to remember - make an os system call. :-)

-> Additionally, AFAIK subprocess is still broken for py2exe'd applications -> which is a problem.

Explain? Programs created with py2exe (or frozen in other ways I believe - including the Wing IDE for example), fail with an error similar to the following :

Traceback (most recent call last): File "main.py", line 133, in main() File "main.py", line 125, in main launch_launcher() File "main.py", line 98, in launch_launcher subprocess.Popen([path], stderr = childstderr) File "subprocess.pyc", line 586, in init File "subprocess.pyc", line 681, in _get_handles File "subprocess.pyc", line 722, in _make_inheritable TypeError: an integer is required

The problem is detailed here :

http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/Py2ExeSubprocessInteractions

"if you used py2exe to create a Windows program as opposed to a console program, and you launched the py2exe program by clicking rather than by running if from a command window, then the parent process has no handle to inherit. subprocess.Popen will throw an exception (TypeError: an integer is required) because GetStdHandle returns None"

(Although the workaround as listed there is reported not to work and I haven't put the effort into experimenting.)

If subprocess is supposed to be the main way that users launch sub-processes it would be nice if it worked for py2exe without the users (who are often newbies) having to put a workaround in place.

Currently of course 'os.system' is often sufficient workaround. :-)

All the best,

Michael Foord

cheers, --titus

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