Document unique behavior of 'getgroups' on OSX

[bitdancer]

BPO	10433
Nosy	@ronaldoussoren, @abalkin, @ned-deily, @bitdancer, @voidspace, @hynek
Files	issue10433.patch issue10433-v2.patch

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2012-04-30.18:19:22.638>
created_at = <Date 2010-11-16.14:06:05.507>
labels = ['OS-mac', 'type-bug', 'docs']
title = "Document unique behavior of 'getgroups' on OSX"
updated_at = <Date 2012-04-30.18:19:22.637>
user = 'https://github.com/bitdancer'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2012-04-30.18:19:22.637>
actor = 'ned.deily'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2012-04-30.18:19:22.638>
closer = 'ned.deily'
components = ['Documentation', 'macOS']
creation = <Date 2010-11-16.14:06:05.507>
creator = 'r.david.murray'
dependencies = []
files = ['21133', '21528']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 10433
keywords = ['patch', 'needs review']
message_count = 6.0
messages = ['121293', '130885', '132917', '159620', '159717', '159720']
nosy_count = 8.0
nosy_names = ['ronaldoussoren', 'belopolsky', 'ned.deily', 'r.david.murray', 'michael.foord', 'docs@python', 'python-dev', 'hynek']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue10433'
versions = ['Python 3.2', 'Python 3.3']

[bitdancer]

Per bpo-7900, os.getgroups on OSX does not behave the same way as on any other unix platform. This seems worthy of a documentation note, since anyone trying to write portable code could get bit by this.

I don't really understand the relationship on OSX between what the current os.getgroups returns, what the normal unix os.getgroups returns, and what things a process can actually *do*, so I can't write that documentation. Hopefully someone else can.

A doc note is probably also needed about the relationship between os.setgroups and os.getgroups on OSX, which again I do not understand and so cannot write.

[ronaldoussoren]

I do understand the issue, but I'm not sure if I can write it down consisely. I've attached an initial attempt (patch is relative to the default branch, I'll port to 2.7 and 3.2 if it looks OK)

[ned-deily]

Here's a revised doc patch. As noted from my investigation in bpo-7900, the key getgroups behavior change is with the OS X 10.6 ABI (so > 10.5), not 10.5.

[hynek]

This one LGTM, still applies cleanly against current tip and is languishing for a way to long time.

Commit & close?

[python-dev]

New changeset 2468b58f7fce by Ned Deily in branch '2.7':
Issue bpo-10433: Document unique behavior of 'os.getgroups' on Mac OS X.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/2468b58f7fce

New changeset 5c801899cd6d by Ned Deily in branch '3.2':
Issue bpo-10433: Document unique behavior of 'os.getgroups' on Mac OS X.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5c801899cd6d

New changeset e7d545a5f6bc by Ned Deily in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-10433: merge
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/e7d545a5f6bc

[ned-deily]

Committed with minor revisions for 2.7.4, 3.2.4, and 3.3.0a3.