Originally reported at [1] and [2].

On Mac OS X, read() on pipes may return only the first 512 bytes. The remaining bytes are not read into `data` in _execute_child(). There's a patch proposal at [3]. I didn't test it myself because I can't reproduce the broken situation.

[1] https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/issues/6840
[2] https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/5386
[3] https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/5386#issuecomment-161111817

I strongly recommend people use https://pypi.python.org/pypi/subprocess32/ instead of Python 2.7's subprocess module whenever possible.

That said, the fix is pretty easy.

New changeset 268d13c7e939 by Gregory P. Smith in branch '2.7':
Fixes issue #26083: Workaround a subprocess bug that raised an incorrect
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/268d13c7e939

note: this was not a security issue nor was it a crash.  an exception was being raised anyways from the forked child prior to the exec(), this bug just caused that to be swallowed and this ValueError raised instead.

> I strongly recommend people use https://pypi.python.org/pypi/subprocess32/

I think this warrants a note that draws more attention to itself than the "see also" text.

I think there is a small problem with the fix in changeset 268d13c7e939 (msg258029).  It copies the string from the return value of _eintr_retry_call() twice.  I am attaching a trivial fix.

Great point!

New changeset 184dfef08a93 by Gregory P. Smith in branch '2.7':
issue26083: Avoid duplicate error message string from a subprocess exec failure.Avoid a duplicate error message string from a subprocess exec failure.
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/184dfef08a93