[Python-Dev] POSIX Capabilities

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Matt Kern schrieb:
> I was looking around for an interface to POSIX capabilities from Python
> under Linux.  I couldn't find anything that did the job, so I wrote the
> attached PosixCapabilities module.   It has a number of shortcomings:
> 
>   * it is written using ctypes to interface directly to libcap;
>   * it assumes the sizes/types of various POSIX defined types;
>   * it only gets/sets process capabilities;
>   * it can test/set/clear capability flags.
> 
> Despite the downsides, I think it would be good to get the package out
> there.  If anyone wishes to adopt it, update it, rewrite it and/or put
> it into the distribution, then feel free.

As Aahz says: make a distutils package out of it, and upload it to
the Cheeseshop.

For inclusion into Python, I would rather prefer to see the traditional
route: make an autoconf test for presence of these functions, then
edit Modules/posixmodule.c to conditionally expose these APIs from
posix/os (they are POSIX functions, after all). The standard library
should expose them as-is, without providing a convenience wrapper.

I believe your implementation has limited portability, due to its
usage of hard-coded symbolic values for the capabilites (I guess
this is the Linux numbering, right?). Unfortunately, a ctypes-based
implementation can't really do much better.

Regards,
Martin