[PyQt] Freezes and crashes with signal autoconnection

[Phil Thompson]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:41:44 -0700 (PDT), Christian Roche
<christian.roche.fr at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi again!
> 
> 
> Phil Thompson-5 wrote:
>> 
>> If you have a list of the QThread instances you can scan the list when
>> finished() is received to see which one it is. There is an obvious race
>> condition with that approach.
>> 
> 
> I don't know if this race condition is obvious but I'm personally unable
to
> identify it. Could you please kindly elaborate a bit for a
multi-threading
> newbie ? :-)

If two threads finish at the same time you may not be able to identify
which is which.

> Phil Thompson-5 wrote:
>> 
>> You could define a method in your QThread sub-class that finished() is
>> connect to. That method just emits another signal but with the QThread
>> instance as an argument.
>> 
> 
> I also have a hard time understanding this one. How could finished()
> connect
> to a method in the originating thread, which by definition is supposed
not
> to exist anymore since it has emitted this very signal? Or is the
semantics
> for this signal more complex?

I think you are confusing the QThread and the thread itself. The former
will still exist when the latter has finished.

> By the way, I applied the first approach you suggested, i.e., I use
> Qt.BlockingQueuedConnection when passing arguments in signals from
threads
> to main, and I now have a slot that collects finished() signals, browse
the
> list of threads and deletes those that it finds effectively finished. The
> behavior is definitely better on Linux, although not perfect, however on
> Windows I still get lots of crashes with no error messages at all.
> Sometimes, but not always, the application spurts some weird error
messages
> in the middle of the run, not right before the crash, like 
> 
> 
>> NotImplementedError: QAbstractListModel.rowCount() is abstract and must
>> be
>> overridden
>> 
> although this method is overriden of course, and works most of the time;
or
> (the application is using shelve):
> 
> 
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>   File "E:\Python\gallery\gallery\gallery.py", line 107, in data
>>     return QVariant(self.getLink(index).getPixmap())
>>   File "E:\Python\gallery\gallery\threads.py", line 76, in getPixmap
>>     filepath = imageCache.getImageFile(self)
>>   File "E:\Python\gallery\gallery\threads.py", line 148, in getImageFile
>>     if self.cache.has_key(url):
>>   File "E:\Programs\Python\lib\shelve.py", line 107, in has_key
>>     return key in self.dict
>>   File "E:\Programs\Python\lib\_abcoll.py", line 329, in __contains__
>>     self[key]
>>   File "E:\Programs\Python\lib\bsddb\__init__.py", line 266, in
>> __getitem__
>>     self._checkOpen()
>> AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute '_checkOpen'
>> 
> or simply (this one arrives right before the crash):
> 
> 
>> NotImplementedError
>> 
> 
> It all seems to be related to the ImageLink instances emitting a signal
> towards a QAbstractListModel layoutChanged signal once download is
> complete.
> I have no problem when I remove this signal (except of course that the
> display does not refresh >-() However this all happens in the main thread
> as
> far as I can tell. I'm going to try and extract a use case for that one
but
> I'm afraid it won't be easy. In the meantime if you could point me to a
> possible likely cause I'd be very grateful!

I can't remember if you are using snapshots or not, but there are some
issues fixed related to looking up Python reimplementations of virtual
methods.

Phil