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gh-158336: Fix race in lock_tests test_set_and_clear - #158337

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matthiasgoergens:fix-test-set-and-clear-flake
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matthiasgoergens wants to merge 1 commit into
python:mainfrom
matthiasgoergens:fix-test-set-and-clear-flake

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@matthiasgoergens

@matthiasgoergens matthiasgoergens commented Sep 28, 2026 •

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Instead of sleeping for 50 ms, wait until all five threads are registered as waiters on the event's condition before calling set() and clear(). Condition.wait() appends the waiter to _waiters while holding the lock, and notify_all() wakes every waiter in that list, so set() then wakes all of them.

With the reproducer from the issue, the test failed in 0 of 40 runs, against 9 of 40 before. The test still catches gh-57711 about as often as before: with Event.wait() changed back to return the flag after waking, it failed in 8 of 20 runs, against 7 of 20 without this change.

The other callers of wait_threads_blocked() are not affected, because a thread that arrives late still finds the lock released, the semaphore available or the event set.

This PR was prepared with the help of an AI assistant (Claude Code) and reviewed by me.

test_set_and_clear started N threads calling event.wait() and then slept
50 ms (wait_threads_blocked) before calling event.set() and event.clear().
If a thread only reached wait() after clear(), it saw the flag unset and
blocked for LONG_TIMEOUT, and Bunch.__exit__ gave up after SHORT_TIMEOUT.
This happened on CI in the TSan free-threading job.

Wait until all N threads are in the Condition's waiter list instead.
Condition.wait() appends the waiter while holding the lock, and
notify_all() releases every waiter in the list, so each of those threads
is guaranteed to be woken by set().

On a TSan free-threading debug build, pinned to 2 CPUs shared with 4
busy-looping processes, the test failed in 9 of 40 runs before this
change and 0 of 40 after.

@vstinner vstinner left a comment

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I hate wait_threads_blocked() sleep, it's a bad synchronization primitive!

Comment thread Lib/test/lock_tests.py
Comment on lines +575 to +578
# Wait until all threads are registered as waiters in
# event.wait(). A thread that only reaches wait() after set()
# and clear() would block until the timeout, so a fixed sleep
# is not enough on a busy machine.

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I don't think that the second part of the comment is useful.

Suggested change
# Wait until all threads are registered as waiters in
# event.wait(). A thread that only reaches wait() after set()
# and clear() would block until the timeout, so a fixed sleep
# is not enough on a busy machine.
# Wait until all threads are registered as waiters in
# event.wait().

Comment thread Lib/test/lock_tests.py
# and clear() would block until the timeout, so a fixed sleep
# is not enough on a busy machine.
for _ in support.sleeping_retry(support.SHORT_TIMEOUT):
if len(event._cond._waiters) >= N:

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If possible, I would prefer to avoid accessing private attributes.

Can you try instead to test if len(results) >= N: break?

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IMO, test might be something like below:

    def test_set_and_clear(self):
        # gh-57711: check that wait() returns true even when the event is
        # cleared before the waiting thread is woken up.
        event = self.eventtype()
        N = 5
        ready = []
        results = []
        def f():
            ready.append(True)
            results.append(event.wait(support.LONG_TIMEOUT))

        with Bunch(f, N):
            # Threads blocked on event.wait()
            for _ in support.sleeping_retry(support.SHORT_TIMEOUT):
                if len(ready) >= N:
                    break

            # Threads unblocked
            event.set()
            for _ in support.sleeping_retry(support.SHORT_TIMEOUT):
                if len(results) >= N:
                    break
            event.clear()

        self.assertEqual(results, [True] * N)

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with Bunch(...): already waits until all started threads complete. Is it really needed to wait until len(results) >= N before calling event.clear()?

The test description says:

check that wait() returns true even when the event is cleared before the waiting thread is woken up.

Waiting for theads between set() and clear() seems to go against the test description.

@YvesDup

YvesDup commented Oct 2, 2026

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@vstinner I suggest opening a PR to replace all wait_threads_blocked calls in the /Lib/test/lock_tests.py test file.

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4 participants