Please decide on chdir() / workdir() context manager

[tiran]

Hi steering council,

please discuss and decide whether a context manager for managing the current working directory of a process should be added to Python stdlib. Several core developers are in favor of the feature, others are against it.

Personally I'm against the feature, because the presence of the feature would promote a problematic and potentially dangerous style. chdir is not thread-safe and concurrency-safe. There are better ways like dir_fd feature on POSIX, use of absolute paths, or subprocess' cwd argument.

PR: python/cpython#28271
python-ideas discussion: https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/thread/C525UVPP3ALGTXDNFL2GFDV23KCHP3RL/

[brettcannon]

I've added it to the agenda, although it's already quite long so I'm not sure when we will get to this.

[brettcannon]

SC says yes to the context manager with an appropriate warning in the docs about its limitations.