The original report, issue1039 has a better problem description:

"In a windows debug build, an assertion is triggered when os.execvpe is
called with an empty argument list:

self.assertRaises(OSError, os.execvpe, 'no such app-', [], None)"

The patch, file8338/os.diff is complete with a test and should be easy to apply to the trunk.

I would be -0 on the change.  On one hand, POSIX seems to require a non-empty argument list, on the other hand at least Linux and MacOS X appear to be happy with os.execlp('true').  Furthemore, the proposed change will change the exception from os.execlp('no such program') from OSError to ValueError, which is not a backward compatible change.  As such it is certainly not appropriate for bug-fix releases.

As far as 3x series are concerned, I think ValueError exception should be documented.