Can we replace the pusutil.pid_exists with another method?

[Hoohaha]

Hi,

pylink is a greate tool and we use it to test MCU devices.
However I always met some trobules if install it on windows 10 system.
It fails to when installing psutil module and it report missing Visual Studio C++2015...
I have to cost many time to download vistual studio installer and then install C++ build tools.

I checked the code and there only one place to use psutil.pid_exists check pid is alive.
Can we remove the module psutil and replace it with other workaround?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/568271/how-to-check-if-there-exists-a-process-with-a-given-pid-in-python

[hkpeprah]

I believe there was an open pull request in the same vein (#68); my concern with what is proposed in the StackOverflow thread is that it doesn't cover all operating systems; taking a look at psutil, they have multiple different implementations of pid_exists() depending on the flavour of *nix, the flavour of Windows, or if you're on OSX. However, since this has been asked more than once, I think adding a install option that allows one to use it without psutil might make sense; something like an install option; this would require updating the setup.py, and adding in the pid_exists() code (probably from #68) with a try-catch of sorts. E.g.

# util.py
def _pid_exists():
   # internal implementation

def pid_exists(pid):
    try:
        import psutil
        return psutil.pid_exists(pid)
    except ImportError:
        return _pid_exists(pid)

[Hoohaha]

I think it is acceptable, this makes pylink easy to install.

[FARLY7]

Hi there @hkpeprah was there any progress on this?

I used the pylink library a lot in our internal and external tooling, but since it requires our Windows users to perform a huge install of Visual Studio C++ IDE and its build tools etc, I have unfortunately had to drop it and opt for commander scripts instead.

This would be a great feature if added. It seems 'broken' to have to install such large prerequisites.

[hkpeprah]

Hi @FARLY7, sorry about that. I currently don't have the bandwidth to work on this, but would gladly accept a modification of #68 that doesn't completely drop psutil, but instead allows for the package to be installed without psutil via some sort of install command option.