I've recently noticed that in py3k, the lack of a suitable sys.path will
cause Py_FatalError() to be called, which immediately terminates the
entire application.
On Windows, it is fairly easy for this to happen for developers or
anyone who hasn't run the official Python installation; just have Python
used in a 'service', web server, COM object or anything else which loads
python3x.dll from the system32 etc directory, and neglect to have added
the PYTHONPATH entry in the registry or global environment. As a result
Python can't sniff a good default sys.path, fails to import encodings,
then winds up calling Py_FatalError("Py_Initialize: can't initialize sys
standard streams");
I realize this is something of an edge-case, but having abort() called
on the application in this case is somewhat harsh and difficult to
diagnose. In Python 2.x, you end up with a fairly crippled Python
environment, but it functions well enough to offer clues that your
sys.path isn't setup.
Would it be practical and desirable to handle this situation more
gracefully, possibly just leaving sys.std* set to None and letting
whatever exceptions then occur happen as normal without terminating the
process? Given it is an edge-case, I thought I'd open it here for
discussion before putting work into a patch or opening a bug.
Thanks,
Mark
_______________________________________________
Python-Dev mailing list
Python-Dev@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
Unsubscribe:
http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
