I have a couple instances in which I cannot seem to be able to run subprocesses from within an Inkscape extension. One is this case:

    def close_dialog(self, name=None):
        try:
            result = subprocess.run(["wmctrl", "-lG"], capture_output=True, text=True).stdout
            w_id = re.sub(r's.+', '', [ line for line in result.split('n') if self.options.name in line][0]).strip()
            result = subprocess.run(["wmctrl", "-v", "-i", "-c", w_id ], shell=False, capture_output=True, text=True)
            result = subprocess.run(["wmctrl", "-v", "-c", self.options.name], shell=False, capture_output=True, text=True)
        except Exception as e:
            self.print_to_tty(e)

which gets called from within the effect:

    def effect(self):
        p = subprocess.run(['xclip', '-o'], input=None, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, text=True, timeout=5)
        self.add_text(p.stdout, separate=True)
        self.close_dialog()
        return

but does not close any window. If I skip the line containing self.add_text or any other line manipulating the svg output, it works ok

The other instance is

    def paste_into_clipboard(self, text):
        p = subprocess.Popen(['xclip', '-selection', 'primary', '-f'], stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
        p.stdin.write(text.encode())
        p.stdin.close()

which hangs forever.

Any subprocess taking input from the clipboard seems to work fine, and so apparently do subprocesses not involving wmctrlor feeding into xclip – but I would not know if that’s a fact.

Any idea as to why these don’t work?