[Python-Dev] PEP 433: Choose the default value of the new cloexec parameter (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Fri Jan 25 12:36:03 CET 2013

Le Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:28:10 +0100, Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com> a écrit :

> I think the default behaviour needs to be configurable from the > environment and the command line, but I don't believe it should be > configurable from within the interpreter.

sys.setdefaultcloexec() is convinient for unit test, but it may also be used by modules. A web framework may want to enable close-on-exec flag by default. The drawback of changing the default value after Python started is that Python may have created file descriptors before, so you cannot guarantee that all existing file descriptors have the flag set. Well, I don't know if sys.setdefaultcloexec() is a good idea or not :-)

Both Charles-François and Nick have good points. sys.setdefaultcloexec() is still useful if you want to force the policy from a Python script's toplevel (it's more practical than trying to fit a command-line option in the shebang line).

Regards

Antoine.

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