In the case of a "errno.ECHILD" exception - Python's subprocess module misses the fact that the process has already ended.

The following code will wait indefinitely, even though the launched process is quickly ended:

import subprocess, signal
signal.signal(signal.SIGCLD, signal.SIG_IGN)
p = subprocess.Popen(['echo','foo'])
while p.poll() is None:
   pass # wait for the process to exit

Note: This is the exact same issue as issue1731717, but applying to the subprocess.poll() method instead of the subprocess.wait() method.

The attached patch handles errno.ECHILD in the _internal_poll() method and I've updated the existing "sigchild_ignore.py" test file to perform polling as well.

An unpatched version of Pyhton would normally hang on this particular test, whilst the patched version will run successfully.

thanks!  I'll take care of getting this fix in.

New changeset 484c50bf445c by Gregory P. Smith in branch '3.2':
Fixes issue #15756: subprocess.poll() now properly handles errno.ECHILD
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/484c50bf445c

New changeset ba8d85552e34 by Gregory P. Smith in branch '3.3':
Fixes issue #15756: subprocess.poll() now properly handles errno.ECHILD
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/ba8d85552e34

New changeset 9032b3f52819 by Gregory P. Smith in branch 'default':
Fixes issue #15756: subprocess.poll() now properly handles errno.ECHILD to
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/9032b3f52819

New changeset 53e91fa35f8e by Gregory P. Smith in branch '2.7':
Issue #15756: subprocess.poll() now properly handles errno.ECHILD to
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/53e91fa35f8e