[Python-Dev] Python program name (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Fri May 4 14:39:52 CEST 2012

On Fri, 4 May 2012 08:44:25 +0000 (UTC) Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

IIUC, the program name of the Python executable is set to whatever argv[0] is. Is there a reason for this, rather than using one of the various OS-specific APIs [1] for getting the name of the running executable? The reason I ask is that in a virtual environment (venv), the exe's path is the only thing you have to go on, and if you don't have that, you can't find the pyvenv.cfg file and hence the base Python from which the venv was created.

Of course argv[0] is normally set to the executable's path, but there's at least one test (in testsys) where Python is spawned (via subprocess) with argv[0] set to "nonexistent". If run from a venv created from a source build, with no Python 3.3 installed, this test fails because the spawned Python can't locate the locale encoding, and bails.

If that's the only failing test, we can simply skip it when run from a venv. A non-existent argv[0] is arguably a borderline case which you should only encounter when e.g. embedding Python.

I would prefer to use option 2 and change getpath.c / getpathp.c accordingly. Does anyone here see problems with that approach?

getpath.c is sufficiently byzantine that we don't want to complexify it too much, IMHO.

Regards

Antoine.

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