[Idle-dev] Infinite Subprocesses and IDLE

[Michael Foord]

A couple of weeks ago (? - approx !) I posted a question to this group. 
I was trying to build IDLE with py2exe and was getting an infinite 
number of subprocesses launched.

I didn't get a response - but in the process of experimenting with 
'testenv' (experimental 'Python runtime' that is becoming 'movable 
python') I discovered the problem. In the spawn_subprocess function in 
PyShell.py it uses sys.executable to launch the subprocess.

When I was freezing IDLE with py2exe - the program pointed to by 
sys.executable was idle.exe... which launched idle.exe... which launched 
idle.exe !

With testenv I hacked PyShell so that it launched a genuine subprocess 
and got it a lot closer to working. It didn't look like the two 
processes  were 'talking to each other' properly though.

In fact SPE with wxpython works without amendment - and I'm getting 
assistance from Stani on the 'movable python' project - so I probably 
*won't* continue to try and get IDLE working. I thought I would send 
this for the sake of completeness though.

Regards,

Fuzzyman
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html