> Do you mean running tests twice, one with posix_spawn(), one without? I mean that after writing tests they can be tested manually by disabling conditions for posix_spawn one by one. I.e. some tests should fail if remove "stdout is None" and some tests should fail if remove "not close_fds", etc. > Can you please elaborate? posix_spawn() may or may not use fork() internally. _posixsubprocess.fork_exec() calls PyOS_BeforeFork/PyOS_AfterFork_Child/PyOS_AfterFork_Parent. If use os.posix_spawn(), these calls will be omitted. This is a behavior change. We should either call these functions manually before/after os.posix_spawn() (but I do not know what to do with PyOS_AfterFork_Child), or disable using os.posix_spawn() if non-trivial callbacks were added, or use other methods for calling registered callbacks. But the stdlib already adds callbacks in the threading and random modules.