There is sometimes a need to set the process name from within python, this would allow you to use something like pkill myapp rather then the process name of your application just being yet another "python". Bugs (which I'm now failing to find in Python's tracker) have been filed about this and many wannabe implementations made, all of them seemed to have many problems however. Aiming for UNIX cross-compatibility they all messed up and end up trying to make the abstraction everywhere, and ususally the code was less then beautiful

But I've just discovered the python-prctl module by Dennis Kaarsemaker which does something far more sensible: rather then trying to be cross-platform it just wraps the Linux prctl system call (as well as libcap). The code looks well written and the API, while a little bit overloaded on the get-set names, seems nice. It even includes what is probably the most sensible implementation of clobbering argv that I've ever seen (but don't use that, no normal person should ever clobber argv!).

If someone writes a nice module like this to cater for the MacOSX guys, the only other system I know of has a system call to set the process name, then I may never have to worry about getting someting like this into PSI at some distant point in the future. (And speaking about PSI, yes the windows port is still slowly under way. I"m just busy with lots of other things at the same time.)