Issue 38607: Document that cprofile/profile only profile the main thread

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This issue has been migrated to GitHub: https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/82788

classification

Title:	Document that cprofile/profile only profile the main thread
Type:	enhancement	Stage:
Components:	Documentation	Versions:	Python 3.9, Python 3.8, Python 3.7

process

Status:	open	Resolution:
Dependencies:		Superseder:
Assigned To:	docs@python	Nosy List:	benspiller, docs@python
Priority:	normal	Keywords:

Created on 2019-10-27 18:18 by benspiller, last changed 2022-04-11 14:59 by admin.

Messages (1)
msg355492 - (view)	Author: Ben Spiller (benspiller) *	Date: 2019-10-27 18:18
The built-in profiling modules only provide information about the main thread (at least when invoked as documented). To avoid user confusion we should state this in the documentation at https://docs.python.org/3/library/profile.html. Potentially we could also suggest mitigations such as manually creating a Profile instance in the user's thread code, but the most important thing is to make clear what the module does/does not do out of the box. (see also https://bugs.python.org/issue9609 which discusses a possible non-doc change to help with multi-threading, but looks like that's stalled, so best to push ahead with doc'ng this.

msg355492 - (view)

Author: Ben Spiller (benspiller) *

Date: 2019-10-27 18:18

The built-in profiling modules only provide information about the main thread (at least when invoked as documented). 

To avoid user confusion we should state this in the documentation at https://docs.python.org/3/library/profile.html. 

Potentially we could also suggest mitigations such as manually creating a Profile instance in the user's thread code, but the most important thing is to make clear what the module does/does not do out of the box. 

(see also https://bugs.python.org/issue9609 which discusses a possible non-doc change to help with multi-threading, but looks like that's stalled, so best to push ahead with doc'ng this.

History
Date	User	Action	Args
2022-04-11 14:59:22	admin	set	github: 82788
2019-10-27 18:18:43	benspiller	create