I am wanting to share multiple resources between multiple python scripts. Ideally what I am trying to do is run my main program. It contains some script wide variables. I then want to fork off the exact same program into a new shell and give it access to my script wide variables.
I am looking into multiprocessing but I am not sure if another way would be better such as using pipes?
You can use Value and Array from multiprocessing for shared memory across processes.
Example from multiprocessing's documentation:
from multiprocessing import Process, Value, Array
def f(n, a):
n.value = 3.1415927
for i in range(len(a)):
a[i] = -a[i]
if __name__ == '__main__':
num = Value('d', 0.0)
arr = Array('i', range(10))
p = Process(target=f, args=(num, arr))
p.start()
p.join()
print(num.value)
print(arr[:])
will output:
3.1415927
[0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -9]
Value and Array classes are abstractions for shared memory allocations, so yes, updates made to instances of these classes from any process will be reflected across all processes with access to the instances.multiprocessing-managed shared memory. If you need to spawn a new terminal window you would have to use subprocess.Popen and communicate with it via a pipe, with no shared memory possible.