[Python-Dev] PEP 371 Discussion (pyProcessing Module)

[Mark Hammond]

> 2008/5/30 Farshid Lashkari <flashk at gmail.com>:
> > I'm not sure if there will be any side affects to modifying
> > sys.executable though. Should this be the official way of supporting
> > embedded interpreters or should there be a
> > multiprocessing.setExecutable() method?
> 
> +1 for setExecutable (I'd prefer set_executable, to be PEP 8
> compliant). Make it explicit, rather than fiddling with stuff in sys
> manually.

sys.executable typically means the "current" executable, and py2exe etc
already fiddles with that.  The question in such a context seems to be "what
executable should I use for this processing functionality?".  In a py2exe
like environment, it might not be unreasonable to assume that if a custom
executable is to be used, that custom executable may have a different
command-line or other special requirements.  Further, I could imagine a
system that uses an alternative way of starting processes (eg, 'distributed
COM') where the concept of 'executable' (or even 'command-line') don't make
much sense.

So it seems that maybe simply "setExecutable()" isn't the correct
abstraction here, but maybe a "factory" approach, so the entire process
creation mechanism can be replaced rather than just the name of the
executable to spawn?

Cheers,

Mark