[IPython-dev] Threads and Ctrl-C

[Hans Meine]

Hi!

I don't know how many of you are actually working with IPython and GUI threads 
- from my traceback experiences, I seem to be rather alone with my 
strugglings.  (I guess other toolkits than Qt - which I use - should have 
similar problems, but I might be wrong.)

OK, try this:

Start "ipython -qthread", enter:

In [1]: import time

In [2]: for i in range(60): time.sleep(1)
   ...:

Now press Ctrl-C, you will get a nice message "KeyboardInterrupt - Press 
<Enter> to continue." which is more or less meaning "I don't know what to do 
with your keypress, since I am totally unaware that the other thread might be 
executing some code".

In the before-mentioned Qt Python shell we wrote at our lab, we had a similar 
situation (probably Toni will be interested in this), but we actually had two 
separate processes for the GUI and Python, mostly to solve exactly this 
single Ctrl-C problem:  As long as Python is doing something, the Ctrl-C 
event would not get through to the GUI event handler, so the event handler 
could not interrupt the interpreter.

Ullrich Köthe's solution was to write a small "interrupt" module that is 
triggered from the other process via a socket and interrupts the interpreter 
by calling PyErr_SetInterrupt().  It's not too large; I attached it for your 
inspiration.  IMHO having the possibility to interrupt some loop you 
accidentally started with wrong parameters is a crucial feature?!

Greetings,
  Hans
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