[ros-users] rospy.sleep() blocking callbacks

[Dan Lazewatsky]

Running the click handler in a regular python thread seemed to do the  
trick. Thanks for the help.

-Dan
On Jul 7, 2010, at 1:02 AM, Geoffrey Biggs wrote:

> It's called the Global Interpreter Lock and it's what prevents Python
> executed using the standard interpreter from being truly concurrent
> (although it also massively simplified efficient interpreter
> implementation).
>
> http://docs.python.org/glossary.html#term-global-interpreter-lock
>
> http://docs.python.org/c-api/init.html#thread-state-and-the-global-interpreter-lock
>
> However, a call to rospy.sleep() should be releasing this lock, and so
> shouldn't be locking up the entire interpreter. It depends on how that
> sleep call is implemented.
>
> To check if the GIL is the problem, try starting another thread and  
> see
> if it keeps executing during the rospy.sleep() call you're having
> problems with.
>
> Geoff
>
> On 07/07/10 14:47, Cedric Pradalier wrote:
>> On 07/07/2010 12:05 AM, Dan Lazewatsky wrote:
>>> I'm writing on a GUI in Python/Tk - I have a subscriber which is
>>> listening for image messages and setting a class member variable  
>>> with
>>> the newest image, and a GUI element that needs to use image (after
>>> sending a message to move a pan/tilt). On click I use  
>>> rospy.sleep() to
>>> wait for the pan/tilt to settle down before using any images.  
>>> However,
>>> I've noticed that once I call rospy.sleep() inside the click  
>>> callback,
>>> the callback for the image subscriber stops getting called. It was  
>>> my
>>> understanding that subscriber callbacks are run asynchronously in
>>> their own thread, so a sleep in a different thread should have no
>>> effect. What's going on here? What am I missing?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> -Dan
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> ros-users mailing list
>>> ros-users at code.ros.org
>>> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>>>
>> Hi Dan,
>>
>> Python is sometimes counter-intuitive with his management of threads,
>> leading sometimes to some global lock where one thread blocks  
>> everything.
>> I'd suggest keeping your in-callback time to a minimum, maybe just
>> triggering another thread which will do the waiting (or switch to C+ 
>> +,
>> with real threads).
>>
>> HTH
>>
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