Drat! I’ve learned that the commands module for Python, which I use, is deprecated and removed in Python according to PEP 3108. That means I can no longer safely call commands.getstatusoutput() anymore. I’ve frequently used this call in the past because it seemed the sanest, easiest way to call for a shell utility and get both its output and return status (for success or error).
I’ll have to find some other way to perform the same function — preferably one that will work on Python 2.3 from Mac OS X Tiger, Python 2.5.1 from Leopard, and future Pythons. The stated replacement for a number of similar modules (including popen2, which frankly kind-of frightened me off with its name) is the subprocess module from PEP 324, but I don’t know if that will work for my purposes.
There are also a bunch of Mac-specific modules being removed. I don’t use any of them right now, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been useful.
This kind of thing is spirit-crushing to me for some reason. I’m especially annoyed that Python has been around for so long and it is still reorganizing the ways it calls shell commands. Just settle on something! It seems hard to take it seriously as a system administration scripting language when things like this happen.
On the other hand, I love so much of the Python Standard Library, which has afforded me a lot for system administration …