Current execution frame of another thread?

sk**@pobox.com wrote:

I would like to try a sampling approach to profiling. My thought is to have
a profiling thread that samples the execution frame of all the other
started threads. I don't see any path from the threads returned by
threading.enumerate() to their current frames. Am I missing something?

I doubt that works. As python uses the OS underlying threading model, it
doesnn't know about the internal management structures - and even it
knew, these had to be carefully designed for that exact purposes of
yours, as the stack frame can only be safely inspected by the thread
_running_ in it.

An external thread could be interrupted at all times while traversing
other threads management structures, and then find a corrupted memory
location when it is re-scheduled.

Maybe one could write a threading model that allwos for hooks in the
scheduler (which has all the time in the world for such stuff) - but I'm
not aware that that's possible under e.g. pthreads, so there is unlikely
a python-way to do so.

Regards,

Diez

sk**@pobox.com wrote:

I would like to try a sampling approach to profiling. My thought is to have
a profiling thread that samples the execution frame of all the other
started threads. I don't see any path from the threads returned by
threading.enumerate() to their current frames. Am I missing something?

I doubt that works. As python uses the OS underlying threading model, it
doesnn't know about the internal management structures - and even it
knew, these had to be carefully designed for that exact purposes of
yours, as the stack frame can only be safely inspected by the thread
_running_ in it.

An external thread could be interrupted at all times while traversing
other threads management structures, and then find a corrupted memory
location when it is re-scheduled.

Maybe one could write a threading model that allwos for hooks in the
scheduler (which has all the time in the world for such stuff) - but I'm
not aware that that's possible under e.g. pthreads, so there is unlikely
a python-way to do so.

Regards,

Diez

sk**@pobox.com wrote:

I would like to try a sampling approach to profiling. My thought is to have
a profiling thread that samples the execution frame of all the other
started threads. I don't see any path from the threads returned by
threading.enumerate() to their current frames. Am I missing something?

Just another thought: Maybe stackless python can be of use here - as it
epxlicits the stack frame, you might be able to inspect it. But I
_think_ basically the same limitations apply as in my other post - you'd
need to be able to stop a thread, scan its frame, and reschedule it.

Diez

sk**@pobox.com wrote:

I would like to try a sampling approach to profiling. My thought is to have
a profiling thread that samples the execution frame of all the other
started threads. I don't see any path from the threads returned by
threading.enumerate() to their current frames. Am I missing something?

Just another thought: Maybe stackless python can be of use here - as it
epxlicits the stack frame, you might be able to inspect it. But I
_think_ basically the same limitations apply as in my other post - you'd
need to be able to stop a thread, scan its frame, and reschedule it.

Diez