How to create a temporary file that can be read by a subprocess?

Since nobody else appears to be interested in leaving this information out in the open…

tempfile does expose a function, mkdtemp(), which can trivialize this problem:

try:
    temp_dir = mkdtemp()
    temp_file = make_a_file_in_a_dir(temp_dir)
    do_your_subprocess_stuff(temp_file)
    remove_your_temp_file(temp_file)
finally:
    os.rmdir(temp_dir)

I leave the implementation of the intermediate functions up to the reader, as one might wish to do things like use mkstemp() to tighten up the security of the temporary file itself, or overwrite the file in-place before removing it. I don’t particularly know what security restrictions one might have that are not easily planned for by perusing the source of tempfile.

Anyway, yes, using NamedTemporaryFile on Windows might be inelegant, and my solution here might also be inelegant, but you’ve already decided that Windows support is more important than elegant code, so you might as well go ahead and do something readable.