Callbacks pended by Py_AddPendingCall will never be invoked if the main thread doesn't release GIL

[JiayiFeng]

According to the Py_AddPendingCall's document (https://docs.python.org/3/c-api/init.html#c.Py_AddPendingCall), a pended callback function should be invoked when:

It will be called asynchronously with respect to normally running Python code, but with both these conditions met:

- on a bytecode boundary;

- with the main thread holding the global interpreter lock.

So if the main thread is processing an endless loop like:

while True:
    pass

A callback pended from another thread by Py_AddPendingCall should still be able to be invoked.

It works in Python 3.8.13, but doesn't work in Python 3.9.13. In 3.9.13, the callback pended by Py_AddPendingCall will never be invoked in this case.

The root cause may be here: https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/19091/files#diff-c22186367cbe20233e843261998dc027ae5f1f8c0d2e778abfa454ae74cc59deL152-L153. After this change, pending a callback from a non-main thread will not set the ceval2->eval_breaker to be true. So when the main thread is trapped in an endless loop and keeps holding GIL, pending callbacks will never be invoked.

[kumaraditya303]

Reproducer:

#include "Python.h"
#include "pthread.h"
#include <unistd.h>

static struct PyModuleDef bugmodule = {
    PyModuleDef_HEAD_INIT,
    "bug",
    NULL,
    -1,
    NULL,
    NULL,
    NULL,
    NULL,
    NULL
};


int cb(void *arg) {
    printf("callback called %ld\n", (int64_t)arg);
    return 0;
}

static void *func(void *arg)
{
    printf("in func\n");
    int64_t i = 0;
    while (1) {
        sleep(1);
        Py_AddPendingCall(cb, (void *)i++);
    }
    return NULL;
}

PyMODINIT_FUNC
PyInit_bug(void)
{
    pthread_t thread;
    pthread_create(&thread, NULL, func, NULL);
    return PyModule_Create(&bugmodule);
}

Python script:

import bug

while True:
    pass

On main:

@kumaraditya303 ➜ /workspaces/cpython (main ✗) $ ./python main.py 
in func

The pending calls are not executed and is broken.

[JiayiFeng]

Here is another demo to reproduce the issue:

#include "Python.h"
#include <chrono>
#include <iostream>
#include <thread>

int main() {
  constexpr char code[] = R"PYTHON(
while True:
    pass
)PYTHON";
  std::thread th([&]() {
    Py_Initialize();
    PyRun_SimpleString(code);
    Py_Finalize();
  });

  // sleep a little time to make sure the Python interpreter is running.
  std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::seconds(1));

  // try to interrupt Python interpreter
  Py_AddPendingCall(
      [](void *) {
        PyErr_SetString(PyExc_KeyboardInterrupt, "abort");
        return -1;
      },
      nullptr);

  th.join();
  std::cout << "ok" << std::endl;
  return 0;
}

With Python 3.8.13, the demo ends normally, while with Python 3.9.12 it hangs forever.

[kumaraditya303]

The fix is simple, just allows all threads to set eval breaker if pending calls to do.

[vstinner]

I would expect your code to work, but you say that it doesn't. I'm not sure why.

This issue is related to issue #84191 and my commit d831688.

I added this function:

/* Only execute pending calls on the main thread. */
static inline int
_Py_ThreadCanHandlePendingCalls(void)
{
    return _Py_IsMainThread();
}

Current ceval code:

/* This can set eval_breaker to 0 even though gil_drop_request became
   1.  We believe this is all right because the eval loop will release
   the GIL eventually anyway. */
static inline void
COMPUTE_EVAL_BREAKER(PyInterpreterState *interp,
                     struct _ceval_runtime_state *ceval,
                     struct _ceval_state *ceval2)
{
    _Py_atomic_store_relaxed(&ceval2->eval_breaker,
        _Py_atomic_load_relaxed_int32(&ceval2->gil_drop_request)
        | (_Py_atomic_load_relaxed_int32(&ceval->signals_pending)
           && _Py_ThreadCanHandleSignals(interp))
        | (_Py_atomic_load_relaxed_int32(&ceval2->pending.calls_to_do)
           && _Py_ThreadCanHandlePendingCalls())
        | ceval2->pending.async_exc);
}

If there is a pending call, a break is only requested if it's the main thread. And the take_gil() functions does that:

    if (_Py_atomic_load_relaxed(&ceval2->gil_drop_request)) {
        RESET_GIL_DROP_REQUEST(interp);
    }
    else {
        /* bpo-40010: eval_breaker should be recomputed to be set to 1 if there
           is a pending signal: signal received by another thread which cannot
           handle signals.

           Note: RESET_GIL_DROP_REQUEST() calls COMPUTE_EVAL_BREAKER(). */
        COMPUTE_EVAL_BREAKER(interp, ceval, ceval2);
    }

If ceval, we should go to this place time to time to handle "pending things" like pending calls:

handle_eval_breaker:

    /* Do periodic things, like check for signals and async I/0.
     * We need to do reasonably frequently, but not too frequently.
     * All loops should include a check of the eval breaker.
     * We also check on return from any builtin function.
     */
    if (_Py_HandlePending(tstate) != 0) {
        goto error;
    }

In your example, it seems like there is no other Python thread waiting in take_gil() which calls SET_GIL_DROP_REQUEST() to ask the main Python thread to interrupt itself, pass the GIL, and then the pending call is handled when the main thread gets again the GIL.

[merlin66]

I have been hit by this bug too, trying to upgrade from Python 3.8.6 to Python 3.11.2. We are just running Python in the main thread, and we call Py_AddPendingCall from a separate pure C/C++ thread. The pending calls are not being called from the main thread unless we do something special there, like calling time.sleep().

Based on the comments here we tried a workaround. Simply spawn a dummy Python thread, for example like this:

import threading
threading.Thread(target=lambda: threading.Event().wait()).start()

Once this has been started, the pending calls are being called again even when the main thread is just running while True: pass.
Mentioning this in case someone finds the workaround useful.