Is time to remove os module spawn* functions?

[vstinner (Victor Stinner)]

I created issue gh-120743 to soft deprecate os.spawn*(), os.popen() and os.system() functions. I’m not sure about soft deprecating os.system(). See the issue, I listed old discussions between 2009 and 2024.

[adorilson (Adorilson Bezerra)]

@vstinner Are there any objective criteria for deciding between a regular and a soft deprecation?

[vstinner (Victor Stinner)]

Here it seems like there is no core dev who support a deprecation involving removal later. Too much code would be affected for little or no benefits.

In general, deprecations are hard deprecations.

[adorilson (Adorilson Bezerra)]

@adorilson

My first idea was to fix the doc before suggesting removing these functions.

I opened this PR: [Doc] Fix os.spawn* functions by adorilson · Pull Request #121094 · python/cpython · GitHub

[vstinner (Victor Stinner)]

@vstinner

I created issue gh-120743 to soft deprecate os.spawn*(), os.popen() and os.system() functions.

I merged my change (commit), but I left os.system() unchanged ( for now ).