Issue with breakpoints in multithreading

Open
#14 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python
Domain
devtools

Research direction

Start with the parallel_fibonacci.py reproduction and the trepan3k entry point; set breakpoints on lines 10 and 29, then compare the behavior with pydb --threading. Trace how trepan3k handles threads and breakpoint dispatch, and consider the issue done when breakpoints inside fibonacci_task and queue_task stop execution as shown in the report.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hi,
It seems trepan3k is not able to stop in breakpoints put inside a function launched as a thread target.
For example, for the script:

import threading
from queue import Queue

fibo_dict = {}
input_list = [3,5,7,9]
shared_queue = Queue()
queue_condition = threading.Condition()

def fibonacci_task(condition):
      with condition: # line 10

        while shared_queue.empty():
            print("[{}] - waiting for elements in queue..".format(threading.current_thread().name))
            condition.wait()

        else:
            value = shared_queue.get()
            a, b = 0, 1
            for item in range(value):
                a, b = b, a + b
                fibo_dict[value] = a

        shared_queue.task_done()
        print("[{}] fibonacci of key [{}] with result [{}]".
              format(threading.current_thread().name, value, fibo_dict[value]))

def queue_task(condition):
    print('Starting queue_task...') # line 29
    with condition:
        for item in input_list:
            shared_queue.put(item)

        print("Notifying fibonacci task threads that the queue is ready to consume...")
        condition.notifyAll()

def main():
    threads = []
    for i in range(3):
        thread = threading.Thread(target=fibonacci_task, args=(queue_condition,))
        thread.daemon = False
        threads.append(thread)

    [thread.start() for thread in threads]

    prod = threading.Thread(name='queue_task_thread', target=queue_task, args=(queue_condition,))
    prod.daemon = False
    prod.start()

    [thread.join() for thread in threads]

    print("[{}] - Result {}".format(threading.current_thread().name, fibo_dict))

if __name__=='__main__':
    main()

If we put breakpoints inside fibonacci_task or queue_task functions:
Trepan3k Execution flow:

$ trepan3k parallel_fibonacci.py
(/tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py:1): <module>
-> 1 import threading
(trepan3k) break 10
Breakpoint 1 set at line 10 of file /tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py
(trepan3k) break 29
Breakpoint 2 set at line 29 of file /tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py
(trepan3k) continue
[Thread-1] - waiting for elements in queue..
[Thread-2] - waiting for elements in queue..
[Thread-3] - waiting for elements in queue..
Starting queue_task...
Notifying fibonacci task threads that the queue is ready to consume...
[Thread-3] fibonacci of key [3] with result [2]
[Thread-2] fibonacci of key [5] with result [5]
[Thread-1] fibonacci of key [7] with result [13]
[MainThread] - Result {3: 2, 5: 5, 7: 13}
The program finished - quit or restart
(/tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py:56 @131): <module>
-> 56     main()   

The debug session ends without stopping in the breakpoints.

If we launch the same debug sessoin with pydb:
Pydb Execution flow:

$ pydb --threading parallel_fibonacci.py 
--Call level -1 
Current thread is MainThread
(/tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py:1):  <module>
1 import threading
(Pydb) break 10
Breakpoint 1 set in file /tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py, line 10.
(Pydb) break 29
Breakpoint 2 set in file /tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py, line 29.
(Pydb) continue
Current thread is Thread-1
(/tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py:10):  fibonacci_task
10     with condition:
(Pydb) continue
Current thread is Thread-2
(/tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py:10):  fibonacci_task
10     with condition:
(Pydb) continue
[Thread-1] - waiting for elements in queue..
Current thread is Thread-3
(/tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py:10):  fibonacci_task
10     with condition:
(Pydb) continue
Current thread is queue_task_thread
(/tmp/python-debug/trepan3k_issue/parallel_fibonacci.py:29):  queue_task
29     print('Starting queue_task...')
(Pydb) [Thread-2] - waiting for elements in queue..

Hope this is useful
Regards

Dominant language
Python
Stars
176
Forks
17
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from Trepan-Debuggers/python3-trepan

All issues in Trepan-Debuggers/python3-trepan

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.