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

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Jan 8 16:58:25 EST 2004


> At 05-01-2004 15:11, Michael Chermside wrote:
> >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.
> 
> A number of people seem to under the impression that win32all contains
> a lots of useful value added code. It does not. It is a very thin SWIG
> wrapper over the windows API that it exposes. There is nothing that you
> will need to copy from it to implement popen5 in C. Just as you would not
> copy code from the python posix module to implement popen5 in C on Unix.
> 
> The value of using win32all would be that you could implement popen5 in
> python rather then C. This might be a good way to develop and test the
> win32 popen5 algorithms before conversion to C. Developing the algorithm
> is going to be the hard part.
> 
> The issue is a packaging one not a code cloning one.
> 
> 1) include win32all in the standard windows python and implement popen5 in 
> python
> 2) implement popen5 in C on windows.
> 
> As I understand it (2) is the suggested way forwards.
> 
> Barry

Hm.  I'd much rather see a pure Python implementation.  This doesn't
seem to be something that's particularly performance critical.
Starting a process takes so many OS resources that the overhead of
doing it in Python is negligeable.

I expect only a very small number of win32all entry points to be
needed in order to implement popen5, and those we can implement in a
separate C module (just as we did for _winreg, which roughly
duplicates the registry access API from win32all).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



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