PEP 442 – Safe object finalization | peps.python.org
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PEP 442 – Safe object finalization
PEP 442 – Safe object finalization
Author
:
Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net>
BDFL-Delegate
:
Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org>
Status
:
Final
Type
:
Standards Track
Created
:
18-May-2013
Python-Version
:
3.4
Post-History
:
18-May-2013
Resolution
:
Python-Dev message
Table of Contents
This PEP proposes to deal with the current limitations of object
finalization. The goal is to be able to define and run finalizers
for any object, regardless of their position in the object graph.
This PEP doesn’t call for any change in Python code. Objects
with existing finalizers will benefit automatically.
ReferenceA directional link from an object to another. The target of the
reference is kept alive by the reference, as long as the source is
itself alive and the reference isn’t cleared.
Weak referenceA directional link from an object to another, which doesn’t keep
alive its target. This PEP focuses on non-weak references.
Reference cycleA cyclic subgraph of directional links between objects, which keeps
those objects from being collected in a pure reference-counting
scheme.
Cyclic isolate (CI)A standalone subgraph of objects in which no object is referenced
from the outside, containing one or several reference cycles,
and
whose objects are still in a usable, non-broken state: they can
access each other from their respective finalizers.
Cyclic garbage collector (GC)A device able to detect cyclic isolates and turn them into cyclic
trash. Objects in cyclic trash are eventually disposed of by
the natural effect of the references being cleared and their
reference counts dropping to zero.
Cyclic trash (CT)A former cyclic isolate whose objects have started being cleared
by the GC. Objects in cyclic trash are potential zombies; if they
are accessed by Python code, the symptoms can vary from weird
AttributeErrors to crashes.
Zombie / broken objectAn object part of cyclic trash. The term stresses that the object
is not safe: its outgoing references may have been cleared, or one
of the objects it references may be zombie. Therefore,
it should not be accessed by arbitrary code (such as finalizers).
FinalizerA function or method called when an object is intended to be
disposed of. The finalizer can access the object and release any
resource held by the object (for example mutexes or file
descriptors). An example is a
__del__ method.
ResurrectionThe process by which a finalizer creates a new reference to an
object in a CI. This can happen as a quirky but supported
side-effect of
__del__ methods.
While this PEP discusses CPython-specific implementation details, the
change in finalization semantics is expected to affect the Python
ecosystem as a whole. In particular, this PEP obsoletes the current
guideline that “objects with a __del__ method should not be part of a
reference cycle”.
The primary benefits of this PEP regard objects with finalizers, such
as objects with a __del__ method and generators with a finally
block. Those objects can now be reclaimed when they are part of a
reference cycle.
The PEP also paves the way for further benefits:
- The module shutdown procedure may not need to set global variables to
None anymore. This could solve a well-known class of irritating issues.
The PEP doesn’t change the semantics of:
- Weak references caught in reference cycles.
- C extension types with a custom tp_dealloc function.
In normal reference-counted disposal, an object’s finalizer is called
just before the object is deallocated. If the finalizer resurrects
the object, deallocation is aborted.
However, if the object was already finalized, then the finalizer isn’t
called. This prevents us from finalizing zombies (see below).
Cyclic isolates are first detected by the garbage collector, and then
disposed of. The detection phase doesn’t change and won’t be described
here. Disposal of a CI traditionally works in the following order:
- Weakrefs to CI objects are cleared, and their callbacks called. At
this point, the objects are still safe to use.
- The CI becomes a CT as the GC systematically breaks all
known references inside it (using the tp_clear function).
- Nothing. All CT objects should have been disposed of in step 2
(as a side-effect of clearing references); this collection is
finished.
This PEP proposes to turn CI disposal into the following sequence (new
steps are in bold):
- Weakrefs to CI objects are cleared, and their callbacks called. At
this point, the objects are still safe to use.
- The finalizers of all CI objects are called.
- The CI is traversed again to determine if it is still isolated.
If it is determined that at least one object in CI is now reachable
from outside the CI, this collection is aborted and the whole CI
is resurrected. Otherwise, proceed.
- The CI becomes a CT as the GC systematically breaks all
known references inside it (using the tp_clear function).
- Nothing. All CT objects should have been disposed of in step 4
(as a side-effect of clearing references); this collection is
finished.
Note
The GC doesn’t recalculate the CI after step 2 above, hence the need
for step 3 to check that the whole subgraph is still isolated.
Type objects get a new tp_finalize slot to which __del__ methods
are mapped (and reciprocally). Generators are modified to use this slot,
rather than tp_del. A tp_finalize function is a normal C
function which will be called with a valid and alive PyObject as its
only argument. It doesn’t need to manipulate the object’s reference count,
as this will be done by the caller. However, it must ensure that the
original exception state is restored before returning to the caller.
For compatibility, tp_del is kept in the type structure. Handling
of objects with a non-NULL tp_del is unchanged: when part of a CI,
they are not finalized and end up in gc.garbage. However, a non-NULL
tp_del is not encountered anymore in the CPython source tree (except
for testing purposes).
Two new C API functions are provided to ease calling of tp_finalize,
especially from custom deallocators.
On the internal side, a bit is reserved in the GC header for GC-managed
objects to signal that they were finalized. This helps avoid finalizing
an object twice (and, especially, finalizing a CT object after it was
broken by the GC).
Note
Objects which are not GC-enabled can also have a tp_finalize slot.
They don’t need the additional bit since their tp_finalize function
can only be called from the deallocator: it therefore cannot be called
twice, except when resurrected.
Following this scheme, an object’s finalizer is always called exactly
once, even if it was resurrected afterwards.
For CI objects, the order in which finalizers are called (step 2 above)
is undefined.
It is important to explain why the proposed change is safe. There
are two aspects to be discussed:
- Can a finalizer access zombie objects (including the object being
finalized)?
- What happens if a finalizer mutates the object graph so as to impact
the CI?
Let’s discuss the first issue. We will divide possible cases in two
categories:
- If the object being finalized is part of the CI: by construction, no
objects in CI are zombies yet, since CI finalizers are called before
any reference breaking is done. Therefore, the finalizer cannot
access zombie objects, which don’t exist.
- If the object being finalized is not part of the CI/CT: by definition,
objects in the CI/CT don’t have any references pointing to them from
outside the CI/CT. Therefore, the finalizer cannot reach any zombie
object (that is, even if the object being finalized was itself
referenced from a zombie object).
Now for the second issue. There are three potential cases:
- The finalizer clears an existing reference to a CI object. The CI
object may be disposed of before the GC tries to break it, which
is fine (the GC simply has to be aware of this possibility).
- The finalizer creates a new reference to a CI object. This can only
happen from a CI object’s finalizer (see above why). Therefore, the
new reference will be detected by the GC after all CI finalizers are
called (step 3 above), and collection will be aborted without any
objects being broken.
- The finalizer clears or creates a reference to a non-CI object. By
construction, this is not a problem.
An implementation is available in branch finalize of the repository
at http://hg.python.org/features/finalize/.
Besides running the normal Python test suite, the implementation adds
test cases for various finalization possibilities including reference cycles,
object resurrection and legacy tp_del slots.
The implementation has also been checked to not produce any regressions on
the following test suites:
Notes about reference cycle collection and weak reference callbacks:
http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/4e687d53b645/Modules/gc_weakref.txt
Generator memory leak: http://bugs.python.org/issue17468
Allow objects to decide if they can be collected by GC:
http://bugs.python.org/issue9141
Module shutdown procedure based on GC
http://bugs.python.org/issue812369
This document has been placed in the public domain.
Contents
Page Source (GitHub)
Source: https://github.com/python/peps/blob/main/peps/pep-0442.rst
Last modified: 2025-02-01 08:59:27 UTC