Version 0.1.2 of Sarge, a cross-platform library which wraps the subprocess module in the standard library, has been released. What changed? ------------- - Fixed issue #12: Prevented a hang which occurred when a redirection failed. - Fixed issue #11: Added "+" to the characters allowed in parameters. - Fixed issue #10: Removed a spurious debugger breakpoint. - Fixed issue #9: Relative pathnames in redirections are now relative to the current working directory for the redirected process. - Added the ability to pass objects with "fileno()" methods as values to the "input" argument of "run()", and a "Feeder" class which facilitates passing data to child processes dynamically over time (rather than just an initial string, byte-string or file). - Added functionality under Windows to use PATH, PATHEXT and the registry to find appropriate commands. This can e.g. convert a command 'foo bar', if 'foo.py' is a Python script in the c:\Tools directory which is on the path, to the equivalent 'c:\Python26\Python.exe c:\Tools\foo.py bar'. This is done internally when a command is parsed, before it is passed to subprocess. - Fixed issue #7: Corrected handling of whitespace and redirections. - Fixed issue #8: Added a missing import. - Added Travis integration. - Added encoding parameter to the "Capture" initializer. - Fixed issue #6: addressed bugs in Capture logic so that iterating over captures is closer to subprocess behaviour. - Tests added to cover added functionality and reported issues. - Numerous documentation updates. What does Sarge do? ------------------- Sarge tries to make interfacing with external programs from your Python applications easier than just using subprocess alone. Sarge offers the following features: * A simple way to run command lines which allows a rich subset of Bash- style shell command syntax, but parsed and run by sarge so that you can run on Windows without cygwin (subject to having those commands available): >>> from sarge import capture_stdout >>> p = capture_stdout('echo foo | cat; echo bar') >>> for line in p.stdout: print(repr(line)) ... 'foo\n' 'bar\n' * The ability to format shell commands with placeholders, such that variables are quoted to prevent shell injection attacks. * The ability to capture output streams without requiring you to program your own threads. You just use a Capture object and then you can read from it as and when you want. * The ability to look for patterns in captured output and to interact accordingly with the child process. Advantages over subprocess --------------------------- Sarge offers the following benefits compared to using subprocess: * The API is very simple. * It's easier to use command pipelines - using subprocess out of the box often leads to deadlocks because pipe buffers get filled up. * It would be nice to use Bash-style pipe syntax on Windows, but Windows shells don't support some of the syntax which is useful, like &&, ||, |& and so on. Sarge gives you that functionality on Windows, without cygwin. * Sometimes, subprocess.Popen.communicate() is not flexible enough for one's needs - for example, when one needs to process output a line at a time without buffering the entire output in memory. * It's desirable to avoid shell injection problems by having the ability to quote command arguments safely. * subprocess allows you to let stderr be the same as stdout, but not the other way around - and sometimes, you need to do that. Python version and platform compatibility ----------------------------------------- Sarge is intended to be used on any Python version >= 2.6 and is tested on Python versions 2.6, 2.7, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X (not all versions are tested on all platforms, but sarge is expected to work correctly on all these versions on all these platforms). Finding out more ---------------- You can read the documentation at http://sarge.readthedocs.org/ There's a lot more information, with examples, than I can put into this post. You can install Sarge using "pip install sarge" to try it out. The project is hosted on BitBucket at https://bitbucket.org/vinay.sajip/sarge/ And you can leave feedback on the issue tracker there. I hope you find Sarge useful! Regards, Vinay Sajip