strptime issue in multi-threaded application

[MRAB]

Joe Holloway wrote:
> We recently uplifted our web application to run on Python 2.6.2.
> We've noticed on a couple occasions that calls into time.strptime have
> failed with this exception:
> 
> ImportError: Failed to import _strptime because the import lockis
> [sic] held by another thread.
> 
> I poked around the source code enough to realize that this is
> apparently due to time.strptime using PyImport_ImportModuleNoBlock
> which potentially raises an ImportError rather than waiting for the
> "import lock" to be released [1].  This appears to have been
> introduced as a workaround for other thread safety concerns [2].
> 
> Does this indicate that strptime and any other library function that
> uses the non-blocking import call in this fashion are not thread safe?
>  Is there an idiomatic way of dealing with this error in
> multi-threaded applications?
> 
> Like I mentioned, it's only happened on a couple occasions because the
> right conditions have to be in place, but something doesn't seem right
> about it.  I thought I'd ask on the mailing list before going so far
> as to open a ticket, but feel free to direct me there if that's the
> appropriate place for this.
> 
> Thanks,
> Joe
> 
> [1] http://www.python.org/doc/2.6/c-api/import.html#PyImport_ImportModuleNoBlock
> [2] http://svn.python.org/view?view=rev&revision=59678

A simple workaround might be to sleep a short time and then retry.