posix_ipc is a Python module (written in C) that permits creation and manipulation of POSIX inter-process semaphores, shared memory and message queues on platforms supporting the POSIX Realtime Extensions a.k.a. POSIX 1003.1b-1993. This includes nearly all Unices, and Windows + Cygwin ≥ 1.7.

For complete documentation, see the usage notes.

posix_ipc is compatible with all supported versions of Python 3. Older versions of posix_ipc may still work under Python 2.x.

If you want to build your own copy of posix_ipc, see the build notes.

Installation

posix_ipc is available from PyPI:

pip install posix-ipc

If you have the source code, you can install posix_ipc with this command:

python -m pip install .

Tests

posix_ipc has a robust test suite. To run tests --

python -m unittest discover --verbose

License

posix_ipc is free software (free as in speech and free as in beer) released under a 3-clause BSD license. Complete licensing information is available in the LICENSE file.

Support

If you have comments, questions, or ideas to share, please use the mailing list: https://groups.io/g/python-posix-ipc/

If you think you've found a bug, you can file an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/osvenskan/posix_ipc/issues

Please note that as of this writing (2025), it's been seven years since anyone found a bug in the core code, so maybe ask on the mailing list first. 🙂

You might also be interested in the similar System V IPC module: https://github.com/osvenskan/sysv_ipc

FAQs

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