Debug Mode

HPy includes a debug mode which includes a lot of useful run-time checks to ensure that C extensions use the API correctly. The major points of the debug mode are:

  1. no special compilation flags are required: it is enough to compile the extension with the Universal ABI.

  2. The debug mode can be activated at import time, and it can be activated per-extension.

  3. You pay the overhead of the debug mode only if you use it. Extensions loaded without the debug mode run at full speed.

This is possible because the whole of the HPy API is provided as part of the HPy context, so debug mode can pass in a special debugging context (that wraps the normal context) without affecting the performance of the regular context at all.

The debugging context can already check for:

  • Leaked handles.

  • Handles used after they are closed.

  • Reading from a memory which is no longer guaranteed to be still valid, for example, the buffer returned by HPyUnicode_AsUTF8AndSize after the corresponding HPy handle was closed.

  • Writing to a memory which should be read-only, for example, the buffer returned by HPyUnicode_AsUTF8AndSize.

Activating Debug Mode

The debug mode works only for extensions built with HPy universal ABI.

To enable the debug mode, use environment variable HPY_DEBUG. If HPY_DEBUG=1, then all HPy modules are loaded with debug context. Alternatively HPY_DEBUG can be set to a comma separated list of names of the modules that should be loaded in the debug mode.

In order to verify that your extension is being loaded in the HPy debug mode, use environment variable HPY_LOG. If this variable is set, then all HPy extensions built in universal ABI mode print a message, such as:

> import snippets
Loading 'snippets' in HPy universal mode with a debug context

If the extension is built in CPython ABI mode, then the HPY_LOG environment variable has no effect.

An HPy extension module may be also explicitly loaded in debug mode using:

mod = hpy.universal.load(module_name, so_filename, debug=True)

When loading HPy extensions explicitly, environment variables HPY_LOG and HPY_DEBUG have no effect for that extension.

Using Debug Mode

The HPy debug module exposes LeakDetector class for detection of leaked handles. LeakDetector can be used to check that some code does not leave behind unclosed HPy handles. For example:

def test_leak_detector():
    from hpy.debug.pytest import LeakDetector
    with LeakDetector() as ld:
        # add_ints is an HPy C function. If it forgets to close a handle,
        # LeakDetector will complain
        assert mixed.add_ints(40, 2) == 42

Additionally, the debug module also exposes pytest fixture hpy_debug that , for the time being, enables the LeakDetector, but may also enable other useful debugging facilities.

from hpy.debug.pytest import hpy_debug
def test_that_uses_leak_detector_fixture(hpy_debug):
    # Run some HPy extension code

ATTENTION: the usage of LeakDetector or hpy_debug by itself does not enable the HPy debug mode! If the debug mode is not enabled for any extension, then those features do nothing useful (but also nothing harmful).

When dealing with handle leaks, it is useful to get a stack trace of the allocation of the leaked handle. This feature has large memory requirements and is therefore opt-in. It can be activated by:

    hpy.debug.set_handle_stack_trace_limit(16)

and disabled by:

    hpy.debug.disable_handle_stack_traces()

Example

Following HPy function leaks a handle:

HPyDef_METH(test_leak_stacktrace, "test_leak_stacktrace",
            test_leak_stacktrace_impl, HPyFunc_NOARGS)
static HPy test_leak_stacktrace_impl(HPyContext *ctx, HPy self)
{
    HPy num = HPyLong_FromLong(ctx, 42);
    if (HPy_IsNull(num)) {
        return HPy_NULL;
    }
    // No HPy_Close(ctx, num);
    return HPy_Dup(ctx, ctx->h_None);
}

When this script is executed in debug mode:

# Run with HPY_DEBUG=1
import hpy.debug
import snippets

hpy.debug.set_handle_stack_trace_limit(16)
from hpy.debug.pytest import LeakDetector
with LeakDetector() as ld:
    snippets.test_leak_stacktrace()

The output is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/path/to/hpy/docs/examples/debug-example.py", line 7, in <module>
    snippets.test_leak_stacktrace()
  File "/path/to/hpy/debug/leakdetector.py", line 43, in __exit__
    self.stop()
  File "/path/to/hpy/debug/leakdetector.py", line 36, in stop
    raise HPyLeakError(leaks)
hpy.debug.leakdetector.HPyLeakError: 1 unclosed handle:
    <DebugHandle 0x556bbcf907c0 for 42>
Allocation stacktrace:
/path/to/site-packages/hpy-0.0.4.dev227+gd7eeec6.d20220510-py3.8-linux-x86_64.egg/hpy/universal.cpython-38d-x86_64-linux-gnu.so(debug_ctx_Long_FromLong+0x45) [0x7f1d928c48c4]
/path/to/site-packages/hpy_snippets-0.0.0-py3.8-linux-x86_64.egg/snippets.hpy.so(+0x122c) [0x7f1d921a622c]
/path/to/site-packages/hpy_snippets-0.0.0-py3.8-linux-x86_64.egg/snippets.hpy.so(+0x14b1) [0x7f1d921a64b1]
/path/to/site-packages/hpy-0.0.4.dev227+gd7eeec6.d20220510-py3.8-linux-x86_64.egg/hpy/universal.cpython-38d-x86_64-linux-gnu.so(debug_ctx_CallRealFunctionFromTrampoline+0xca) [0x7f1d928bde1e]
/path/to/site-packages/hpy_snippets-0.0.0-py3.8-linux-x86_64.egg/snippets.hpy.so(+0x129b) [0x7f1d921a629b]
/path/to/site-packages/hpy_snippets-0.0.0-py3.8-linux-x86_64.egg/snippets.hpy.so(+0x1472) [0x7f1d921a6472]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(+0x10a022) [0x7f1d93807022]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(+0x1e986b) [0x7f1d938e686b]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(+0x2015e9) [0x7f1d938fe5e9]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(_PyEval_EvalFrameDefault+0x1008c) [0x7f1d938f875a]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(PyEval_EvalFrameEx+0x64) [0x7f1d938e86b8]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(_PyEval_EvalCodeWithName+0xfaa) [0x7f1d938fc8af]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(PyEval_EvalCodeEx+0x86) [0x7f1d938fca25]
/path/to/libpython3.8d.so.1.0(PyEval_EvalCode+0x4b) [0x7f1d938e862b]

For the time being, HPy uses the glibc backtrace and backtrace_symbols functions. Therefore all their caveats and limitations apply. Usual recommendations to get more symbols in the traces and not only addresses, such as snippets.hpy.so(+0x122c), are:

  • link your native code with -rdynamic flag (LDFLAGS="-rdynamic")

  • build your code without optimizations and with debug symbols (CFLAGS="-O0 -g")

  • use addr2line command line utility, e.g.: addr2line -e /path/to/snippets.hpy.so -C -f +0x122c