another solution, in development environment of course, is killing process using it, for example
def serve():
server = HTTPServer(('', PORT_NUMBER), BaseHTTPRequestHandler)
print 'Started httpserver on port ' , PORT_NUMBER
server.serve_forever()
try:
serve()
except Exception, e:
print "probably port is used. killing processes using given port %d, %s"%(PORT_NUMBER,e)
os.system("xterm -e 'sudo fuser -kuv %d/tcp'" % PORT_NUMBER)
serve()
raise e