Problem with prepare_C2M2_submission.py in Windows

[jessicalumian]

This is a message we received from the Help Desk. I have re-posted it here for better visibility.

I was trying to run the prepare_C2M2_submission.py in Windows but it does not run and produces an error as below. I know most people use Linux system to run it but I tried in on Windows and thus wanted to let you know. It works on Linux.

C:\Users\jeetvora\cfde_venv\Scripts\prep_submission>py prepare_C2M2_submission.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\jeetvora\cfde_venv\Scripts\prep_submission\prepare_C2M2_submission.py", line 1331, in
identifyTermsUsed()
File "C:\Users\jeetvora\cfde_venv\Scripts\prep_submission\prepare_C2M2_submission.py", line 255, in identifyTermsUsed
progressReport("Loading all CV terms used in submission tables... [" + subprocess.check_output(['date']).decode(sys.stdout.encoding).rstrip('\r\n') + "]\n")
File "C:\Users\jeetvora\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\subprocess.py", line 420, in check_output
return run(*popenargs, stdout=PIPE, timeout=timeout, check=True,
File "C:\Users\jeetvora\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\subprocess.py", line 501, in run
with Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs) as process:
File "C:\Users\jeetvora\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\subprocess.py", line 966, in init
self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds,
File "C:\Users\jeetvora\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\subprocess.py", line 1435, in _execute_child
hp, ht, pid, tid = _winapi.CreateProcess(executable, args,
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

C:\Users\jeetvora\cfde_venv\Scripts\prep_submission>py
Python 3.10.4 (tags/v3.10.4:9d38120, Mar 23 2022, 23:13:41) [MSC v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

[ctb]

it looks like it's trying to run the date program at the command line, which I don't think exists on Windows. We could potentially switch to using internal Python date-time libraries for this, but I don't have any sense for what other subprocess calls might be lurking in this code.