import subprocess
proc = subprocess.Popen('git status')
print 'result: ', proc.communicate()
I have git in my system path, but when I run subprocess like this I get:
WindowsError: [Error 2] The system cannot find the file specified
How can I get subprocess to find git in the system path?
Python 2.6 on Windows XP.
The problem you see here is that the Windows API function CreateProcess, used by subprocess under the hood, doesn't auto-resolve other executable extensions than .exe. On Windows, the 'git' command is really installed as git.cmd. Therefore, you should modify your example to explicitly invoke git.cmd:
import subprocess
proc = subprocess.Popen('git.cmd status')
print 'result: ', proc.communicate()
The reason git works when shell==True is that the Windows shell auto-resolves git to git.cmd.
import subprocess
import os.path
def resolve_path(executable):
if os.path.sep in executable:
raise ValueError("Invalid filename: %s" % executable)
path = os.environ.get("PATH", "").split(os.pathsep)
# PATHEXT tells us which extensions an executable may have
path_exts = os.environ.get("PATHEXT", ".exe;.bat;.cmd").split(";")
has_ext = os.path.splitext(executable)[1] in path_exts
if not has_ext:
exts = path_exts
else:
# Don't try to append any extensions
exts = [""]
for d in path:
try:
for ext in exts:
exepath = os.path.join(d, executable + ext)
if os.access(exepath, os.X_OK):
return exepath
except OSError:
pass
return None
git = resolve_path("git")
proc = subprocess.Popen('{0} status'.format(git))
print 'result: ', proc.communicate()
You mean
proc = subprocess.Popen(["git", "status"], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
The first argument of subprocess.Popen takes a shlex.split-like list of arguments.
or:
proc = subprocess.Popen("git status", stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
This is not recommended, as you are launching a shell then launching a process in the shell.
Also, you should use stdout=subprocess.PIPE to retrieve the result.
shell=True if you're on Windows, maybe. See bugs.python.org/issue8557 . The discussion in the comments is enlightening,
Note that in 2020, with With Git 2.28 (Q3 2020), Python 2.6 or older is no longer supported.
See commit 45a87a8 (07 Jun 2020) by Denton Liu (Denton-L).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 6361eb7, 18 Jun 2020)
CodingGuidelines: specify Python 2.7 is the oldest versionSigned-off-by: Denton Liu
In 0b4396f068 ("
git-p4: make python2.7 the oldest supported version", 2019-12-13, Git v2.27.0-rc0 -- merge listed in batch #1), git-p4 was updated to only support 2.7 and newer. Since Python 2.6 is pretty much ancient history, update CodingGuidelines to show that 2.7 is the oldest version supported.
I believe you need to pass env in to Popen, something like:
import subprocess, os
proc = subprocess.Popen('git status', env=os.environ, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
Should do the trick.
env is equivalent to os.environ.
PATH, but that git is installed as 'git.cmd', rather than 'git.exe', which would be found by subprocess.Popen.subprocess.check_output(...)on windows 10 after updating git to 2.19.1. Worked before the update. Now does not even work withshell=True.