python.exe vs pythonw.exe difference?

[Thomas Heller]

"Emile van Sebille" <emile at fenx.com> writes:

> Dear group,
>
> I've possibly narrowed a problem I'm having running zope as a service
> on winxp pro sp 1 in that when started from a command line as:
>
> c:\zope\v27\lib\python\python.exe
> c:\zope\v27\lib\python\zope\startup\run.py -C
> c:\zope\v27\instance\etc\zope.conf
>
> it starts up just fine (although now running from the console).
>
> But when I start it with:
>
> c:\zope\v27\lib\python\pythonw.exe
> c:\zope\v27\lib\python\zope\startup\run.py -C
> c:\zope\v27\instance\etc\zope.conf
>
> it dies after about 30 seconds.
>
> It wouldn't surprise me that I'm doing something it doesn't like (I'm
> spawning additional processes from within a product but it worked fine
> with 2.5), but I'm somewhat at a loss as to debugging it in that when
> run as a console app it works fine, but when run windowless it
> doesn't.
>
> Do I have to write out check points to a file? or is there some way to
> use Mark Hammonds process debugging tools?  Or is this a bug, known or
> otherwise?
>
> Pointers and hints welcome.

It has been reported that writing to the original sys.stdout (and maybe
also sys.stderr) sooner or later raises an IOError when running
pythonw.exe, unless these are redirected.  Could this be the problem?

Thomas