Python: run shell command in a specific directory

Question

I use python script to compile a maven project.

If I use

from subprocess import call
call("mvn clean && mvn compile")

I can't define the directory of my maven project and maven tries to compile in directory of Python script.

Is there any standard way to define execution directory for the shell command?

[os.chdir()](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/431684/how-do-i-cd-in-python) — heathobrien, Dec 14 '16 at 09:29
nope, there's a `cwd` parameter in `subprocess.call`, much better than a `os.chdir()` — Jean-François Fabre, Dec 14 '16 at 09:32

Jean-François Fabre · Answer 1 · 2016-12-14T10:39:18.683

your command should use

shell=True since it's using 2 commands chained by an exit condition test
cwd=your_directory
status check

like this:

from subprocess import call
status = call("mvn clean && mvn compile",cwd="/users/foo/xxx",shell=True)

Personally I tend to avoid depending on shell=True. In those cases I tend to decompose both commands and put arguments directly as argument list so if some nasty whitespace slips in it is quoted automatically:

if call(["mvn","clean"],cwd="/users/foo/xxx") == 0:
    status = call(["mvn","compile"],cwd="/users/foo/xxx")

Note that if you want to get hold of the commands output from the python side (without redirecting to a file, which is dirty), you'll need Popen with stdout=PIPE instead of call

Python: run shell command in a specific directory

1 Answers1