[Python-Dev] Why is spawn*p* not available on Windows?

[Shane Holloway (IEEE)]

Ok, so here's my story.  I got curious as to why the various spawn*p* 
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