__del__() order is broken since 3.4.0

[AlexeyKazantsev]

BPO	23720
Nosy	@tim-one, @rhettinger, @amauryfa, @pitrou, @vadmium, @serhiy-storchaka
Files	bug.py bug2.py

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/pitrou'
closed_at = None
created_at = <Date 2015-03-20.12:56:26.520>
labels = ['interpreter-core', 'invalid', 'performance']
title = '__del__() order is broken since 3.4.0'
updated_at = <Date 2015-03-28.10:07:58.120>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/AlexeyKazantsev'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2015-03-28.10:07:58.120>
actor = 'terry.reedy'
assignee = 'pitrou'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Interpreter Core']
creation = <Date 2015-03-20.12:56:26.520>
creator = 'Alexey Kazantsev'
dependencies = []
files = ['38599', '38621']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 23720
keywords = []
message_count = 13.0
messages = ['238661', '238662', '238669', '238680', '238787', '238788', '238790', '238791', '238792', '238794', '238796', '238829', '239437']
nosy_count = 8.0
nosy_names = ['tim.peters', 'rhettinger', 'amaury.forgeotdarc', 'pitrou', 'martin.panter', 'serhiy.storchaka', 'Vadim Markovtsev', 'Alexey Kazantsev']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'low'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = 'needs patch'
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = 'performance'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue23720'
versions = ['Python 3.5']

[AlexeyKazantsev]

Pythons prior to 3.4.0 print

Vector!
Device!

while >=3.4.0 print

Device!
Vector!

If we replace Main with Vector on line 21, the behavior becomes random: in 50% of all cases it prints the wrong sequence, in other 50% the right. Our team treats this as a bug for several reasons:

1. Objects should be destroyed in breadth first reference tree traversal order, starting from the root. There are no cycles. It is nonsense to have freed children in parent's destructor.

2. Our applications suffer very much from this bug. Real "Vector" holds GPGPU memory and real "Device" holds the context, and CUDA/OpenCL require the context to be freed the last. With CUDA, the invalid destructor call order leads to segmentation faults.

This may have something to deal with the implementation of PEP-442 (though in our case there no reference cycles at all).

[VadimMarkovtsev]

+1

[amauryfa]

Actually there *is* a cycle:
assert a.vector is a.vector.device.__class__.__del__.__globals__['a'].vector

A workaround is to not store objects with __del__ in module globals...
Or have only one (the Main instance in your case)

[pitrou]

Amaury is right. In your case you could keep track of the Vectors in the Device object and invalidate them when the Device is destroyed (using e.g. a WeakSet). Or Vector could delegate its destruction to Device, e.g.:

class Device(object):        
    destroyed = False

    def __del__(self):
        self.destroyed = True

    def _dealloc_vector(self, v):
        if not self.destroyed:
            ...


class Vector(object):        
    def __init__(self, device):
        self.device = device
        
    def __del__(self):
        self.device._dealloc_vector(self)

[AlexeyKazantsev]

Ok, even assuming that all module globals are in circular reference starting with python 3.4, here is another example without using the globals:

Brief description:
v holds reference to d
a.v = v
b.d = d
Now when we form a circular reference a <-> b, the destructor order becomes wrong for v and d.

[serhiy-storchaka]

There is a cycle for every class with a method.

>>> class A:
...     def __del__(self): pass
... 
>>> A.__del__.__globals__['A']
<class '__main__.A'>

[vadmium]

There is a cycle involving the class object, but I don’t think there is a cycle involving the instance objects this time.

However, I wonder if __del__() is meant to be called in any particular order anyway. What’s to stop the garbage collector itself from creating a temporary reference to the Device instance, destroying the Vector instance, which invokes Vector.__del__(), and finally destroying the temporary reference to the Device instance?

[pitrou]

Alexey, you're right that in this case (bug2.py) the cyclic GC is a bit less friendly than it was. It's not obvious there's a way to change that without introduce a lot of complexity. I'll try to take a look some day, although others may help too :-)

That said, my advice in msg238680 still holds. When you're writing a Python wrapper around a C or C++ library with well-defined ownership relationships, I think you should enforce those in the Python wrapper as well (that's my experience with llvmlite, anyway).

[serhiy-storchaka]

There is a cycle involving the class object, but I don’t think there is a cycle involving the instance objects this time.

It is.

>>> a = A()
>>> a.__class__.__del__.__globals__['a']
<__main__.A object at 0xb702230c>

And all objects referenced from user class or module level instance of user class are in a cycle. This problem can cause issues such as bpo-17852.

[vadmium]

But in the case of bug2.py, “a” is a variable inside main(), not a global variable.

BTW I take back my second paragraph questioning the whole order thing; I clearly didn’t think that one through.

[serhiy-storchaka]

Yes, in bug2.py we have different cycle.

a ↔ b
↓ ↓
v → d

a and b are in a cycle, and therefore v and d are in cycle. I think that in such case v always should be destroyed before d, independently of a cycle that refers them. And this is the same situation, as for io classes. A TextIOWrapper object refers a BufferedWriter object, a BufferedWriter object refers a FileIO object. and some cycle refers a TextIOWrapper object. As a result a FileIO object can be closed before a TextIOWrapper object or a BufferedWriter object flush its buffer.

[rhettinger]

Can this be closed as not-a-bug.

[terryjreedy]

While this is not a bug, Antoine said he might look at improving the situation, so I leave it to him to close it or not.

[AlexWaygood]

There seems to be agreement that this is not a bug, and there's been no activity on this issue for 7 years. I'm therefore closing the issue. If any of the participants are still interested in working on this problem, they're obviously free to reopen the issue.