[Python-Dev] deprecate commands.getstatus()

[Titus Brown]

Hi all,

I posted about adding 'get_output', 'get_status_output', and
'get_status_output_errors' to subprocess here,

    http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/mar-07/replacing-commands-with-subprocess

and got some interesting responses.

Briefly, my original proposal was to add these three functions:

  output = get_output(cmd, input=None, cwd=None, env=None)

  (status, output) = get_status_output(cmd, input=None, cwd=None, env=None)
  (status, output, errout) = get_status_output_errors(cmd, input=None,
                                                      cwd=None, env=None)

Commenters convinced me to propose a few additions.  In order of
estimated plausibility,

 * first, all sensical keyword args to subprocess.Popen
   (everything but universal_newlines, stdout, stderr, and bufsize,
   which don't make much sense in the context of the proposed functions)
   should be accepted by the 'get_' functions.

   This complicates the function signatures but does make them
   potentially much more useful.

 * second, I'd like to add a 'require_success' bool keyword, that is
   by default False (and does nothing in that case).  However, when
   True, the functions would emulate check_call, i.e. they would raise
   CalledProcessError when the returncode was not zero.

 * third, the 'popen2' module should be deprecated for 2.6.  I don't see
   that it has anything in it that subprocess doesn't have.

Thoughts?

--titus

p.s. This has been a fun learning process... ;)