Not working on app engine

[jsphpl]

When trying to use smart_open in App Engine, i get the following error:

from subprocess import _args_from_interpreter_flags
ImportError: cannot import name _args_from_interpreter_flags

Loosely translated through google, this reads as there is no multiprocessing on app engine, see

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22235919/cannot-import-name-args-from-interpreter-flags
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-appengine/BCtU881-XgQ

Any ideas how to tackle this? App Engine is very interesting platform for smart_open due to its lack of local disk access and limited memory.

[piskvorky]

Very interesting use case, thanks for reporting!

Yes, if multiprocessing breaks smart_open on App Engine, we should make it optional. Multiprocessing is only needed in a few places, it's optional and not critical in any way for smart_open to work.

Can you add a fix for this in a pull request, @jsphpl ?

I'm thinking some dynamic (runtime) check to see if multiprocessing is available (catch ImportError); if yes, proceed as normal. If not, do a warnings.warn to notify the user that he's running a gelded version of smart_open, but otherwise continue working.

[jsphpl]

Okay thank you, that sounds promising - i'll look at the code and see what i can do.

[jsphpl]

Fixed by #39. Tests still missing (see #47)