Async generators are not garbage collected

[vytas7]

BPO	40986
Nosy	@asvetlov, @1st1, @vytas7
Files	test.py: Async test case test_sync.py: Sync test case test_trio.py: Async test case (w/ trio)

^{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 = None
closed_at = <Date 2020-06-24.20:26:26.145>
created_at = <Date 2020-06-15.14:27:50.640>
labels = ['invalid', 'expert-asyncio', '3.8', 'performance']
title = 'Async generators are not garbage collected'
updated_at = <Date 2020-06-24.20:26:26.144>
user = 'https://github.com/vytas7'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2020-06-24.20:26:26.144>
actor = 'vytas'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2020-06-24.20:26:26.145>
closer = 'vytas'
components = ['asyncio']
creation = <Date 2020-06-15.14:27:50.640>
creator = 'vytas'
dependencies = []
files = ['49231', '49232', '49233']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 40986
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['371550', '371560', '372277']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['asvetlov', 'yselivanov', 'vytas']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'resource usage'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue40986'
versions = ['Python 3.8']

[vytas7]

Hello!
I am having issues with asynchronous generators not being garbage collected at least until the current loop has completed.

In the attached test case (test.py), one starts iterating over an asynchronous generator, then breaks and returns the first element. After each call, gc.collect() is invoked for illustration purposes.
It seems that no memory is freed until the whole test() coroutine is done.

The for-loop could obviously be extended to more iterations, or swapped out to a while-loop to easily run out of available memory.

I have then removed all async stuff, producing test_sync.py (also attached). In the sync case, everything is garbage-collected as I would expect.

[vytas7]

Just for the heck of it, I've tried running my test case with Trio (FWIW, I've never used trio before), and it does seem to work as expected.

[vytas7]

I've now skimmed through the relevant Trio issue python-trio/trio#265 and the currently deferred https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0533/ and, as I understand, the issue is not trivial and subject to subtle edge cases.

Getting back to the issue, it looks like a misunderstanding on my side, sorry!

As per PEP-525:

The asyncio event loop will use sys.set_asyncgen_hooks() API to maintain a weak set of all scheduled asynchronous generators, and to schedule their aclose() coroutine methods when it is time for generators to be GCed.

It seems that my original test case just doesn't give these aclose() coroutines a chance to run. Awaiting an asyncio.sleep() "fixes" that.