Bastion/rexec use cases?

[Duncan Booth]

Paul Miller <neokosmos at gmail.com> wrote:

> Bastion and rexec have been deprecated since Python 2.2, so it seems
> we (the Python community) have gotten along well enough without them.
> Have these modules not been reimplemented because:
> 
> a) There are no valid use cases for them.
> b) Doing so would be difficult and prone to breakage as new features
> are introduced into the language.
> c) Nobody has any idea how to do it.
> d) Nobody cares.
> e) Guido thinks it's a bad idea.
> 
> or, some combination of these?
> 
> 
I think it is mostly 'b' plus partly nobody cares sufficiently to put the 
time, money and effort behind it.

The recent release of Silverlight means that there is now a way to run 
Python in a secure sandbox. At present it is only available for Windows and 
Mac, but hopefully the Mono community will be able to overcome that 
deficiency (also of course you don't get all of the standard Python 
libraries): see http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight for the current state 
of the Mono based Silverlight implementation.