Issue 7425: Improve the robustness of "pydoc -k" in the face of broken modules (original) (raw)

Issue7425

Created on 2009-12-02 20:49 by dmalcolm, last changed 2022-04-11 14:56 by admin. This issue is now closed.

Files
File name Uploaded Description Edit
make-pydoc-more-robust-001.patch dmalcolm,2009-12-02 20:49 Patch to make "pydoc -k" silently ignore all exceptions when importing modules, not just ImportError review
Messages (10)
msg95918 - (view) Author: Dave Malcolm (dmalcolm) (Python committer) Date: 2009-12-02 20:49
I see occasional failures where a broken module prevents "pydoc -k" ("apropos") from working. Examples of failures (from our downstream bug tracker) are: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=461419 : "pydoc -k" yields "NameError: name 'wglUseFontBitmapsW' is not defined" (a broken OpenGL/WGL/__init__.py module) https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=447779 : "pydoc turbogears" doesn't work (broken TurboGears module) https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=246212 : "pydoc -k searchterm" MemoryError. permission denied. (module only intended to be importable as "root" user) In each case one or more of the many modules on the system are broken, and importing them leads to an exception being raised that isn't ImportError. In each case, the exception bubbles up through the pydoc call ands leads to it exiting. Obviously the broken modules should be fixed, but it seems to me that pydoc could be more robust against this situation. I'm attaching a simple patch which makes "pydoc -k" more robust against this situation, by silently discarding all exceptions raised by imported modules. How does this look? One downstream bug report requested taking it further: > Running "pydoc -k" should catch all exceptions while importing modules, and > display failed modules _after_ all positive keyword matches (not in between). > It also should redirect stdout/stderr while importing so error message e.a. > don't clutter up the list of hits. to deal with broken modules that spew error messages (this was in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=461419#c3 ); I've seen some do it to stdout and some to stderr. How does this sound? I can try to update the patch for this too, if this sounds sane to you.
msg102668 - (view) Author: Daniel Diniz (ajaksu2) * (Python triager) Date: 2010-04-09 02:00
Nice improvement. This would also solve the "help(), modules" brokenness, right?
msg102745 - (view) Author: Antoine Pitrou (pitrou) * (Python committer) Date: 2010-04-09 20:08
Is it a dup of ?
msg102760 - (view) Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) * (Python committer) Date: 2010-04-10 01:02
It doesn't look like it is the same bug to me. This one is more general.
msg118731 - (view) Author: Dave Malcolm (dmalcolm) (Python committer) Date: 2010-10-14 23:24
I notice this issue is in stage "unit test needed". It's not clear to me how to add a unit test for this: one idea I had is to create a broken module in some subdir somewhere, and invoke "pydoc -k" as a subprocess with PYTHONPATH containing the extra subdir (and assert no traceback seen in stderr of the child). Does that sound sane?
msg118737 - (view) Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) * (Python committer) Date: 2010-10-15 02:00
Yes, and I can't think of any other way to approach it.
msg143542 - (view) Author: Éric Araujo (eric.araujo) * (Python committer) Date: 2011-09-05 16:12
Does this patch solves only pydoc -k, not all “invalid spam module makes pydoc crash”? (I wanted to consolidate the handful of reports we have into one but did not get the time.)
msg144811 - (view) Author: Ned Deily (ned.deily) * (Python committer) Date: 2011-10-03 10:20
It turns out that the proposed fix here for pydoc was independently added in the early days of Python 3 but was not backported. That fix for 2.7 plus a fix-in-progress for Issue7367 (for both 2.7 and 3.x) and additional test cases (also in progress) should address most if not all of the pydoc crash issues. I'll also review the other open issues.
msg145042 - (view) Author: Roundup Robot (python-dev) (Python triager) Date: 2011-10-06 21:43
New changeset 45862f4ab1c5 by Ned Deily in branch '2.7': Issue #7425: Refactor test_pydoc test case for '-k' behavior and add http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/45862f4ab1c5 New changeset 3acf90f71178 by Ned Deily in branch '2.7': Issue #7425: Prevent pydoc -k failures due to module import errors. http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/3acf90f71178 New changeset 6a45f917f167 by Ned Deily in branch '3.2': Issue #7425: Refactor test_pydoc test case for '-k' behavior and add http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/6a45f917f167 New changeset add444274c3d by Ned Deily in branch '2.7': Issue #7425 and Issue #7367: add NEWS items. http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/add444274c3d
msg145044 - (view) Author: Ned Deily (ned.deily) * (Python committer) Date: 2011-10-06 22:10
The applied changesets backport the "ignore exceptions" fix for pydoc -k from 3.x to 2.7 and also refactor test_pydoc to remove unneeded complexity and add test cases for importing bad packages and unreadable package directories (a problem addressed in Issue7367). Applied to 2.7 (for 2.7.3), 3.2 (for 3.2.3), and default (for 3.3.0).
History
Date User Action Args
2022-04-11 14:56:55 admin set github: 51674
2012-02-04 16:09:55 ned.deily link issue13880 superseder
2011-10-07 07:10:20 ned.deily link issue7015 superseder
2011-10-06 22:11:02 ned.deily set stage: patch review -> resolved
2011-10-06 22:10:41 ned.deily set status: open -> closedresolution: fixedmessages: +
2011-10-06 21:43:08 python-dev set nosy: + python-devmessages: +
2011-10-03 10:20:10 ned.deily set assignee: ned.deilymessages: +
2011-09-05 16:12:20 eric.araujo set nosy: + eric.araujomessages: + title: [PATCH] Improve the robustness of "pydoc -k" in the face of broken modules -> Improve the robustness of "pydoc -k" in the face of broken modules
2011-09-05 01:33:12 ned.deily set nosy: + ned.deily, Christian.S..Peroneversions: + Python 3.3, - Python 3.1
2011-09-05 01:31:25 ned.deily link issue12894 superseder
2011-01-03 20:19:17 pitrou set nosy:pitrou, ajaksu2, r.david.murray, dmalcolmstage: test needed -> patch reviewversions: + Python 3.1, Python 2.7, Python 3.2, - Python 2.6
2010-10-15 02:00:55 r.david.murray set messages: +
2010-10-14 23:24:32 dmalcolm set messages: +
2010-04-10 01:02:07 r.david.murray set nosy: + r.david.murraymessages: +
2010-04-09 20:08:58 pitrou set nosy: + pitroumessages: +
2010-04-09 02:00:03 ajaksu2 set priority: normalnosy: + ajaksu2messages: + type: behaviorstage: test needed
2009-12-02 20:49:29 dmalcolm create