[issue33725] Python crashes on macOS after fork with no exec

[Ned Deily]

Ned Deily <nad at python.org> added the comment:

> To be clear, what is unsafe on macOS (as of 10.13, but even more so on 10.14) is calling into the Objective-C runtime between fork and exec.

No, it has *always* been unsafe. What's new as of 10.13/14 is that macOS tries much harder at runtime to detect such cases and more predictably cause an error rather than letter than let the process run on and possibly fail nondeterministically. 

> Do only a few Python module use the Objective-C runtime? Or is it basically "everything"?

I don't think we should try to second-guess this.  We now recognize that using fork like this on macOS has always been dangerous.  For some programs it will be fine, for others it won't.  People have had many macOS and Python releases to deal with this; if it works for their application, we shouldn't be changing the default for them.  But let's make it easier for new users to do the right thing - first by documenting the pitfall, than, in 3.8, changing the default.

----------

_______________________________________
Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue33725>
_______________________________________