[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 324: popen5 - New POSIX process module

[Josiah Carlson]

> There are some issues wrt Windows support. Currently, popen5 does not 
> support Windows at all. To be able to do so, we must chose between:
> 
> 1) Rely on Mark Hammonds Win32 extensions. This makes it possible to keep
> popen5 as a pure Python module. The drawback is that Windows support won't
> be available unless the user installs win32all. Does anyone think there's
> a problem with adding a module to the Python standard library that uses
> win32all?

I am not familliar with any other standard library module that requres a
non-standard module.  I don't believe this is a good idea.

> 2) Write supporting code in C (basically, copy the required process 
> handling functions from win32all). 

Depending on how stable the code has been, this may be the best idea. As
long as the maintainer of the popen5 windows support code kept
themselves updated on the status of applicable changes to win32all, this
should go on without a hitch.

It does bring up the fact that doing so would result in a possibly
nontrivial amount of code duplication between a new portion of the
python standard library, and a platform specific module.

 - Josiah