Inconsistent documentation about calling subprocess inside async function in a child thread

[temach]

Documentation

This page states: https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio-dev.html#concurrency-and-multithreading

To handle signals and to execute subprocesses, the event loop must be run in the main thread.

For me this means that if I want to use subprocess call my async function must be triggered by loop on the main thread. In other words async functions can not call subprocess when running in child thread.

However this page states: https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio-subprocess.html#subprocess-and-threads

Standard asyncio event loop supports running subprocesses from different threads by default.

To me this means that I can spawn a child thread, call async function inside it, and that async function is free to call subprocess without problems.

Linked PRs

• gh-108224: fix doc inconsistency #108230
• [3.12] gh-108224: Fix asyncio doc inconsistency (GH-108230) #108231
• [3.11] gh-108224: Fix asyncio doc inconsistency (GH-108230) #108232

[gvanrossum]

Looks like the line in asyncio-dev.rst is just wrong. It should only require running in the main thread for handling signals. Feel free to submit a doc PR.