Re: Optional BSD package is required for (useable) Python?

On May 11, 2004, at 7:16 PM, Bob Ippolito wrote:
> > > No, /bin/sh doesn't provide the execve functionality required.
> >
> > Yes, I've heard you mention this execve issue, but I still don't 
> > appreciate what the issue is.  My introduction to bundle-builder was 
> > through the BitPim project <http://bitpim.sourceforge.net/>, which 
> > distributes a Mac executable built with bundle-builder.  Replacing 
> > the python startup script with a /bin/sh script in the BitPim bundle 
> > seemed to work fine, that is, the app still starts up correctly when 
> > double-clicked in the Finder, and that's the only thing that needs to 
> > work in this case.
>
> It's possible that it works for that app, but it doesn't do what it's 
> supposed to be doing.  When finder starts an app it assigns a process 
> serial number to that pid, if you don't use execve then the pid 
> changes.

You can use 'exec' from a Bourne-shell script, too, if preserving the 
PID of the startup script is the only issue.  I thought the problem was 
something more than that.

> There's a lot of funny things that can happen if you don't obey all 
> the rules.

What rules are broken by using a shell script?

> For example, maybe you can start more than one simultaneous instance 
> of BitPim, or some obscure things fail.

"Maybe"?  How?

> I try not to follow the "whatever works" philosophy when developing 
> software if I can avoid it :)

That's admirable, but it's still not clear to me that there are real 
problems here that demand the use of a python startup script.  How is 
python's 'execve' different from the shell's 'exec'?


Tom


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