Issue 36477: Subinterpreters are not finalized during runtime finalization. (original) (raw)

When using subinterpreters, any that exist when Py_FinalizeEx() is called do not appear to get cleaned up during runtime finalization. Maybe I've been looking at the code too much and I'm missing something. :)

This really isn't a problem except for embedders that use subinterpreters (where we're leaking memory). However, even with the "python" executable it can have an impact because the subinterpreters' non-daemon threads will exit later than expected. (see #36469 & #36476)

The solution would be to finalize all subinterpreters at the beginning of Py_FinalizeEx(), right before the call to wait_for_thread_shutdown(). This means calling Py_EndInterpreter() for all the runtime's interpreters (except the main one). It would also mean setting a flag (_PyRuntime.interpreters.finalizing?) right before that to disallow creation of any more subinterptreters.