Python bug in Windows 8--report now, or later?

[Brian Curtin]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 13:01, Kevin Walzer <kw at codebykevin.com> wrote:
> I have been testing my Python application on the just-released developer
> preview of Windows 8 and have noted an error: the application does not
> create an app folder in the user's "application data" directory. This causes
> the app to crash on startup. Manually creating the directory solves the
> problem. Since the app uses an os.mkdir() call to create the directory, and
> since the app runs fine on Windows 7, my guess is that the bug lies
> somewhere in the interaction between Python (I'm using ActivePython 2.7) and
> Windows.
>
> Here's the relevant code:
>
>    #make preferences directory if it does not exist
>    def makePrefsDir(self):
>        self.appdir = os.path.join(os.path.join(os.environ['APPDATA'],
> 'MyApp'))
>        if not os.path.exists(self.appdir):
>            os.mkdir(self.appdir)
>
> I realize that this developer preview of Windows is still at somewhere
> between alpha- and beta-level, and it's possible things will get better.
> Should I wait to report this as a bug until Windows 8 is released, or do the
> Python developers test Python on pre-release versions of Windows?

First, is your application actually crashing, or does it just exit due
to an unhandled exception? I suspect the latter, so if that's true,
what's the exception and message?

You said "the application does not create an app folder in the user's
'application data' directory" -- what does this mean, or rather, what
is the specific folder you're expecting to have? If Python can't
create the directory but you can do it manually, there may be some
permission or access differences new to Windows 8. What does "echo
%APPDATA%" give you?

I haven't installed Windows 8 yet, but I'm planning to get it up and
running soon. If you submit issues to http://bugs.python.org,
hopefully with specific test cases that we can run and work with,
it'll be easier to track and fix. If you do that, add me to the nosy
list on the issues - tracker id: brian.curtin, I'm one of the Windows
people around there.