Lock contention inside `_PyType_LookupRef`

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

As part of adding free-threading support to LibCST, we noticed there is a lot of lock contention on TYPE_LOCK inside the _PyType_LookupRef function. In the LibCST, the common "visitor" pattern is used. For example, in the _visitors.py module there is the code:

visit_func = getattr(self, f"visit_{type(node).__name__}", None)

The second argument to getattr() is a non-interned string and it causes the cached and lock-free path of _PyType_LookupRef() never to be taken. Instead, the TYPE_LOCK mutex is acquired on each lookup. This obviously scales very badly if there are multiple threads looking up class methods using this pattern.

Testing was done with Python 3.13 but I believe the same issue exists with 3.14.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

This is a minor feature, which does not need previous discussion elsewhere

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response

Linked PRs

• gh-132381
• gh-131174
• gh-132651
• gh-132652
• gh-133669
• gh-135112

Start by reading _PyType_LookupRef and the TYPE_LOCK path in CPython, then inspect the visitor pattern in LibCST’s _visitors.py. Compare the behavior on Python 3.13 and 3.14 and review the linked PRs; done should include an agreed change that addresses the lock contention and evidence that the lookup path scales better.