[Python-Dev] cpython (3.2): Fixes issue #8052: The posix subprocess module's close_fds behavior was (original) (raw)

Gregory P. Smith greg at krypto.org
Sun Jan 22 00:36:26 CET 2012

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:39:41 +0100 gregory.p.smith <python-checkins at python.org> wrote:

http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/61aa484a3e54 changeset:   74563:61aa484a3e54 branch:      3.2 parent:      74561:d01fecadf3ea user:        Gregory P. Smith <greg at krypto.org> date:        Sat Jan 21 14:01:08 2012 -0800 summary: Fixes issue #8052: The posix subprocess module's closefds behavior was suboptimal by closing all possible file descriptors rather than just the open ones in the child process before exec(). For what it's worth, I'm not really confident with so much new low-level code in a bugfix release. IMHO it's more of a new feature, since it's a performance improvement.

No APIs change and it makes the subprocess module usable on systems running with high file descriptor limits where it was painfully slow to use in the past.

This was a regression in behavior introduced with 3.2's change to make close_fds=True be the (quite sane) default so I do consider it a fix rather than a performance improvement.

Obviously the final decision rests with the 3.2.3 release manager.

For anyone uncomfortable with the code itself: The equivalent of that code has been in use in production at work continuously in multithreaded processes across a massive number of machines running a variety of versions of Linux for many years now. And the non-Linux code is effectively what the Java VM's Process module does.

-gps

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