@Marvin What's the benefit of using the prefect-shell integration over spawning a process with python subprocess? There are a few tasks in my flow that needs to spawn a third-party binary and retrieve the output.

The

prefect-shell

integration offers several benefits over using Python's

subprocess

module when working within Prefect flows: 1. Observability and Resiliency: Prefect-shell allows you to integrate shell commands into Prefect flows, providing built-in observability and resiliency features that are not available with subprocess. This can be particularly useful if you're transitioning from shell scripts to Prefect. 2. Prefect Blocks: You can save shell commands within a

ShellOperation

block, making them reusable across different flows. This modularity is not inherently available with subprocess. 3. Integration with Prefect's Ecosystem: Using prefect-shell means that your shell operations are integrated into the broader Prefect ecosystem, which can simplify orchestration, monitoring, and error handling. 4. Ease of Use: Prefect-shell is designed to work seamlessly with Prefect's flow constructs, reducing the need for boilerplate code to handle subprocess management. For more details, you can explore the Prefect-shell documentation. In contrast, Python's

subprocess

is more generic and requires manual handling for many of these features, which might be less efficient in a Prefect-centric workflow.