posix_ipc is a Python module (written in C) that permits creation and manipulation of POSIX inter-process semaphores, shared memory and message queues on platforms supporting the POSIX Realtime Extensions a.k.a. POSIX 1003.1b-1993. This includes nearly all Unices, and Windows + Cygwin ≥ 1.7.
For complete documentation, see the usage notes.
posix_ipc is compatible with all supported versions of Python 3. Older versions of posix_ipc may still work under Python 2.x.
If you want to build your own copy of posix_ipc, see the build notes.
posix_ipc is available from PyPI:
pip install posix-ipc
If you have the source code, you can install posix_ipc with this command:
python -m pip install .
posix_ipc has a robust test suite. To run tests --
python -m unittest discover --verbose
posix_ipc is free software (free as in speech and free as in beer) released under a 3-clause BSD license. Complete licensing information is available in the LICENSE file.
If you have comments, questions, or ideas to share, please use the mailing list: https://groups.io/g/python-posix-ipc/
If you think you've found a bug, you can file an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/osvenskan/posix_ipc/issues
Please note that as of this writing (2025), it's been seven years since anyone found a bug in the core code, so maybe ask on the mailing list first. 🙂
You might also be interested in the similar System V IPC module: https://github.com/osvenskan/sysv_ipc