initgroups(2) is a function for initializing the aux group id list fromsite-specific configuration (typically /etc/groups, but not necessarily).Attached is a patch based on some code from Zope, expanded to have atest and some docs.  Presumably Zope will be happy to use this functionfrom the stdlib once they can depend on a version of Python whichincludes it.  Twisted would like to as well.I wasn't able to test the autoconf related parts of the patch as I don'thave easy access to autoconf 2.61.I also can't run regrtest.py in my environment for some reason.  Itfails to import some names from test_support.  So I didn't run the unittest that I added, either.

In case anyone is concerned about licensing issues, please see<https://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2009-November/038289.html>

The test should skip when not hasattr(os, 'initgroups') since it's optional

Good point.  Updated patch attached.

You can use the new test-skipping feature:http://docs.python.org/dev/library/unittest.html#skipping-tests-and-expected-failures

Alright.  Updated patch attached.

pyflakes told me I didn't import errno in test_posix.py.  Updated patchattached.

The documentation is os.rst is too laconic (coming from the Windowsworld, I could not understand what the function is about).The docstring is much better (at least I understand it's related to theUnix security model), I suggest to use it for the documentation.

New version attached which makes the os.rst docs the same as thedocstring.  Also fixes a conflict since introduced in trunk in configure.in.

Slightly modified and committed inr76636 (trunk) andr76637 (py3k).Thank you.