Await, What?

Tell you what waits for what in an async/await program.

TL;DR

Say you have this code:

async def job():
    await foo()


async def foo():
    await bar()


async def bar():
    await baz()


async def baz():
    await leaf()


async def leaf():
    await asyncio.sleep(1)  # imagine you don't know this


async def work():
    await asyncio.gather(..., job())

Now that code is stuck and and you want to know why.

Python built-in tools give you this, and it's not helpful:

Stack for <Task pending coro=<job() …> wait_for=<Future pending cb=[<TaskWakeupMethWrapper …>()]> cb=[…]> (most recent call last):
  File "test/test_stack.py", line 34, in job
    await foo()

This library gives you more:

Stack for <Task pending coro=<job() …> wait_for=<Future pending cb=[<TaskWakeupMethWrapper …>()]> cb=[…]> (most recent call last):
  File "test/test_stack.py", line 34, in job
    await foo()
  File "test/test_stack.py", line 38, in foo
    await bar()
  File "test/test_stack.py", line 42, in bar
    await baz()
  File "test/test_stack.py", line 46, in baz
    await leaf()
  File "test/test_stack.py", line 50, in leaf
    await asyncio.sleep(1)
  File "/…/asyncio/tasks.py", line 568, in sleep
    return await future
  File "<Sentinel>", line 0, in <_asyncio.FutureIter object at 0x7fb6981690d8>: …

Mailing list reference

https://mail.python.org/archives/list/async-sig@python.org/thread/6E2LRVLKYSMGEAZ7OYOYR3PMZUUYSS3K/

Original post dump

Hi group,

I'm recently debugging a long-running asyncio program that appears to get stuck about once a week.

The tools I've discovered so far are: high level: asyncio.all_tasks() + asyncio.Task.get_stack() low level: loop._selector._fd_to_key

What's missing is the middle level, i.e. stack-like linkage of what is waiting for what. For a practical example, consider:

async def leaf(): await somesocket.recv()
async def baz(): await leaf()
async def bar(): await baz()
async def foo(): await bar()
async def job(): await foo()
async def work(): await asyncio.gather(..., job())
async def main(): asyncio.run(work())

The task stack will contain:

• main and body of work with line number
• job task with line number pointing to foo

The file descriptor mapping, socket fd, loop._recv() and a Future.

What's missing are connections foo->bar->baz->leaf. That is, I can't tell which task is waiting for what terminal Future.

Is this problem solved in some way that I'm not aware of? Is there a library or external tool for this already?

Perhaps, if I could get a list of all pending coroutines, I could figure out what's wrong.

If no such API exists, I'm thinking of the following:

async def foo():
    await bar()

In [37]: dis.dis(foo)
  1           0 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (bar)
              2 CALL_FUNCTION            0
              4 GET_AWAITABLE
              6 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
              8 YIELD_FROM
             10 POP_TOP
             12 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
             14 RETURN_VALUE

Starting from a pending task, I'd get it's coroutine and:

Get the coroutine frame, and if current instruction is YIELD_FROM, then the reference to the awaitable should be on the top of the stack. If that reference points to a pending coroutine, I'd add that to the "forward trace" and repeat.

At some point I'd reach an awaitable that's not a pending coroutine, which may be: another Task (I already got those), a low-level Future (can be looked up in event loop), an Event (tough luck, shoulda logged all Event's on creation) or a dozen other corner cases.

What do y'all think of this approach?

Thanks, D.