how about solving this with subprocess module (should be more widely installed already I'd say). I have not submitted a PR yet, but maybe you can take a look at my fork at https://github.com/rhein/ice - it also contains some other fixes I found useful for myself.

Go for it, if you like. The PR I submitted should work, too.

Note that if adopted, plumbum could also offer neater replacements for the current uses of os.system, os.path, os.getenv, os.listdir, etc.