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

[Michael Chermside]

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004, Peter Åstrand wrote:

> PEP 324: popen5 - New POSIX process module
   [...]
> 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. [...]
> or 
> 2) [...] copy the required process handling functions from win32all

I STRONGLY support doing ONE of these so that popen5 (gee... we gotta
get a better name) works "on all major platforms". Ideally, it would
work "out of the box", ie, on all sane installations. Personally, I 
think managing an extra copy of the code would be a bit of a pain,
so I would probably prefer (1) (rely on win32all). But that means
that people who write simple cross-platform scripts and utilities
can't really use popen5 and expect things to work. (I'm not worried
about people who write whole applications in Python... they can go
ahead and require win32all or ensure it gets loaded. But if I'm writing
some short utility scripts or, worse yet, writing code to be published
in a magazine or journal and typed in / downloaded by random users,
then I am strongly urged to use only completely portable code.)

So I guess I am forced to put up with (2), and the (hopefully minor)
headaches of copying Mark's code UNLESS we can somehow ensure that
win32all is available on all sane windows installs. If, for instance,
it were released with the python.org releases for the Windows platform,
(other packagers already include it), then I think we could dispense
with the annoying need to duplicate code.

-- Michael Chermside