I would like to implement a cooperative file locking mechanism in Python, that would also work on remote partitions (e.g. NFS), with a simple code (I want to avoid using a third-party module, because I want some specific open-source code to not have dependencies).
There are solutions out there that look relatively cross-platform, but they are more complicated than I would like: ideally the exact same lines of code would run on all platforms.
A solution is to use some atomic operation that tries to create a lock and fails if it cannot (e.g. a lock in the form of a directory). Creating a directory is atomic on Unix, so that's a good first step. Now, what would be an equivalent solution for Windows? I have read somewhere that maybe creating a link (how?) would be atomic; if creating a directory is atomic on Windows, that would be even better, as the same code could be used for both Windows and Unix, but I can't find out whether this is the case.
To summarize: what would be a simple, cross-platform Python code (no library) for creating (and releasing) a cooperative file lock, that also works on remote partitions? The directory creation route looks promising, but does it work on Windows?
