This PR enhances the user experience when aPermissionError occurs while attempting to attach to a process usingpdb -p or tools likeasyncio ps andasyncio pstree. It adds platform-specific guidance for Linux, macOS, and Windows to help users understand why the operation failed and how to resolve it (e.g., usingsudo, adjusting system settings, or enabling debugging privileges).

Currently, the same logic is duplicated in bothpdb andasyncio.tools. If anyone has recommendations on how to avoid this duplication, I’d appreciate input. I couldn't find a clear shared location in the standard library where this kind of utility logic would belong.

ivonastojanovic requested review fromgaogaotiantian,1st1,asvetlov,kumaraditya303 andwillingc ascode owners

May 19, 2025 21:52

bedevere-appbot added the awaiting review label

May 19, 2025

ivonastojanovic added2 commits

May 19, 2025 17:57

Improve permission error messages in pdb with platform-specific guidance

3c24450

Add help texts for Linux, macOS, and Windows to guide users inresolving permission errors when attaching to a process using the-p option.

Improve permission error messages in asyncio.tools

6101e33

Add platform-specific guidance to help users resolve permission errorswhen inspecting running processes with asyncio.tools.

ivonastojanovic force-pushed thepermission_error_message branch from2b62a35 to6101e33Compare

May 19, 2025 21:57

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ivonastojanovic commentedMay 19, 2025

CC@pablogsal

pablogsal added skip issue skip news needs backport to 3.14bugs and security fixes labels

May 20, 2025

kumaraditya303 reviewed

May 21, 2025

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Lib/asyncio/tools.py

		This function is called when a PermissionError is encountered while trying
		to attach to a process.
		"""
		system = platform.system()

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kumaraditya303May 21, 2025

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sys is already imported, so you can usesys.platform

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gaogaotiantian commentedMay 21, 2025•
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Should this live in the code? I think this should live in the docs and we should just print a link for it. This documentation should probably live withsys.remote_exec. We don't want to duplicate this everywhere that usessys.remote_exec(). I don't think we should have this big chunk of clearly documentation in the code itself.

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pablogsal commentedMay 21, 2025•
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Should this live in the code? I think this should live in the docs and we should just print a link for it.

I think so. We want to provide actionable output to the users right where the error happens and not just in the docs. We could put it somewhere in the docs and drop a link there though although I think that is slight worse experience. But I don't feel very strongly

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gaogaotiantian commentedMay 21, 2025

I think this is too much text living in the code - especially with multiple copies. If we have a third library that utilizessys.remote_exec, are we going to replicate the whole text again? Under the hood, this is an issue withsys.remote_exec, not the modules that use it. For users that usesys.remote_exec directly, they'll still be confused.

I suggest that we put a link to the docs in thePermissionError itself as a message, so it would be simply shown in the traceback.