Trouble running script in spawed window

[wilmer-suarez-simplisafe]

Environment:

• Windows 11
• Python 3.12

I have a Tkinter application that I'm bundling using PyInstaller.
Following some guidance from https://github.com/orgs/pyinstaller/discussions/5978, I'm trying to spawn a terminal window and running a script within it during the runtime of the frozen application. Below is an example of what I'm doing:

import sys
from os import path
from pathlib import Path
from subprocess import call
from platform import system
from tkinter import messagebox
from app.l_app import App


if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) > 1 and sys.argv[1] == "--terminal":
        meipass = Path(getattr(sys, "_MEIPASS")).resolve()
        if not meipass:
            messagebox.showwarning("Error", "_MEIPASS attribute is not set!")
            sys.exit(1)
        else:
            script_path = path.join(meipass, "manager.py")
            update_table_path(path.join(meipass, "tools", "table.json"))

        # Use remaining args to pass to manager.py.
        sys.argv = [script_path] + sys.argv[2:]
        try:
            call("clear" if system() == "Darwin" else "cls")
            exec(open(script_path).read())
        except FileNotFoundError:
            messagebox.showwarning("Error", f"Script file '{script_path}' not found!")
            sys.exit(1)
    else:
        App().run()

This works fine on macOS (M2). A terminal is spawned and manager.py is executed within it (manager.py starts a miniterm instance).
Trying to run on Windows via the frozen app triggers the FileNotFoundError. Using the os module and checking manually prior to the exec call, the script path exists, and the file is accessible, so I'm not sure why this is happening on Windows. Any insight?

[rokm]

That FileNotFoundError is probably raised by

call("clear" if system() == "Darwin" else "cls")

because cls is not a program on Windows, but a shell command:

>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call('cls')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "c:\Users\Rok\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\subprocess.py", line 389, in call
    with Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs) as p:
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "c:\Users\Rok\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\subprocess.py", line 1026, in __init__
    self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds,
  File "c:\Users\Rok\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\subprocess.py", line 1538, in _execute_child
    hp, ht, pid, tid = _winapi.CreateProcess(executable, args,
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

Using subprocess.call('cls', shell=True), on the other hand, should work.

[bwoodsend]

Note that it's clear on Linux too so you really want "cls" if system() == "Windows" else "clear". That said, you can probably just use print('\x1b[H\x1b[2J\x1b[3J').