multiprocessing — Paralelismo baseado em processo

Código-fonte: Lib/multiprocessing/

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Disponibilidade

Este módulo não tem suporte em plataformas móveis ou plataformas WebAssembly.

Introdução

multiprocessing é um pacote que oferece suporte à invocação de processos utilizando uma API semelhante ao módulo threading. O pacote multiprocessing oferece simultaneamente concorrência local e remota, efetivamente contornando a trava global do interpretador, ao utilizar subprocessos ao invés de threads. Devido a isso, o módulo multiprocessing permite ao programador aproveitar totalmente os múltiplos processadores de uma máquina. Ele funciona tanto em POSIX como em Windows.

O módulo multiprocessing também introduz APIs que não têm análogos no módulo threading. Um exemplo principal disso é o objeto Pool que oferece um meio conveniente de paralelizar a execução de uma função em vários valores de entrada, distribuindo os dados de entrada entre processos (paralelismo de dados). O exemplo a seguir demonstra a prática comum de definir tais funções em um módulo para que os processos filhos possam importar esse módulo com sucesso. Este exemplo básico de paralelismo de dados usando Pool,

from multiprocessing import Pool

def f(x):
    return x*x

if __name__ == '__main__':
    with Pool(5) as p:
        print(p.map(f, [1, 2, 3]))

vai exibir na saída padrão

[1, 4, 9]

Ver também

concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor oferece uma interface de nível mais alto para enviar tarefas para um processo em segundo plano sem bloquear a execução do processo de chamada. Comparado ao uso direto da interface Pool, a API concurrent.futures permite mais prontamente que o envio de trabalho para o pool de processos subjacente seja separado da espera pelos resultados.

A classe Process

Em multiprocessing, os processos são gerados criando um objeto Process e então chamando seu método start(). Process segue a API de threading.Thread. Um exemplo trivial de um programa multiprocesso é

from multiprocessing import Process

def f(name):
    print('hello', name)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    p = Process(target=f, args=('bob',))
    p.start()
    p.join()

Para mostrar os IDs de processo individuais envolvidos, aqui está um exemplo expandido:

from multiprocessing import Process
import os

def info(title):
    print(title)
    print('module name:', __name__)
    print('parent process:', os.getppid())
    print('process id:', os.getpid())

def f(name):
    info('function f')
    print('hello', name)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    info('main line')
    p = Process(target=f, args=('bob',))
    p.start()
    p.join()

Para uma explicação do porquê a parte if __name__ == '__main__' é necessária, veja Programming guidelines.

Contextos e métodos de inicialização

Dependendo da plataforma, multiprocessing suporta três maneiras de iniciar um processo. Estes métodos de início são

spawn

O processo pai inicia um novo processo de interpretador Python. O processo filho herdará apenas os recursos necessários para executar o método run() do objeto do processo. Em particular, descritores de arquivo e identificadores desnecessários do processo pai não serão herdados. Iniciar um processo usando esse método é bem lento comparado a usar fork ou forkserver.

Disponível em plataformas POSIX e Windows. O padrão no Windows e macOS.

fork

O processo pai usa os.fork() para fazer um fork do interpretador Python. O processo filho, quando começa, é efetivamente idêntico ao processo pai. Todos os recursos do pai são herdados pelo processo filho. Observe que fazer um fork com segurança de um processo multithread é problemático.

Disponível em sistemas POSIX. Atualmente o padrão em POSIX, exceto macOS.

Nota

O método de início padrão deixará de ser fork no Python 3.14. O código que requer fork deve especificar explicitamente isso via get_context() ou set_start_method().

Alterado na versão 3.12: Se o Python for capaz de detectar que seu processo tem várias threads, a função os.fork() que esse método de início chama internamente levantará DeprecationWarning. Use um método de início diferente. Veja a documentação de os.fork() para mais explicações.

forkserver

Quando o programa é inicializado e seleciona o método de início forkserver, um processo de servidor é gerado. A partir disso, sempre que um novo processo é necessário, o processo pai conecta-se ao servidor e solicita que um novo processo seja feito um fork. O processo fork do servidor é de thread única, a menos que bibliotecas do sistema ou importações pré-carregadas gerem threads como um efeito colateral; neste sentido, geralmente é seguro usar os.fork(). Nenhum recurso desnecessário é herdado.

Disponível em plataformas POSIX que suportam a passagem de descritores de arquivo em Unix pipes, como o Linux.

Alterado na versão 3.4: spawn adicionado em todas as plataformas POSIX, e forkserver adicionado para algumas plataformas POSIX. Processos filhos não herdam mais todos os handles herdáveis ​​dos pais no Windows.

Alterado na versão 3.8: No macOS, o método de início spawn agora é o padrão. O método de início fork deve ser considerado inseguro, pois pode levar a travamentos do subprocesso, pois as bibliotecas do sistema macOS podem iniciar threads. Veja bpo-33725.

No POSIX, usar os métodos de início spawn ou forkserver também iniciará um processo rastreador de recursos que rastreia os recursos de sistema nomeados não vinculados (como semáforos nomeados ou objetos SharedMemory) criados por processos do programa. Quando todos os processos tiverem saído, o resource tracker desvincula qualquer objeto rastreado restante. Normalmente, não deve haver nenhum, mas se um processo foi morto por um sinal, pode haver alguns recursos “vazados”. (Nem os semáforos vazados nem os segmentos de memória compartilhada serão desvinculados automaticamente até a próxima reinicialização do sistema. Isso é problemático para ambos os objetos porque o sistema permite apenas um número limitado de semáforos nomeados, e os segmentos de memória compartilhada ocupam algum espaço na memória principal.)

Para selecionar um método de início, você usa set_start_method() na cláusula if __name__ == '__main__' do módulo principal. Por exemplo:

import multiprocessing as mp

def foo(q):
    q.put('hello')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    mp.set_start_method('spawn')
    q = mp.Queue()
    p = mp.Process(target=foo, args=(q,))
    p.start()
    print(q.get())
    p.join()

set_start_method() não deve ser usada mais de uma vez no programa.

Alternativamente, você pode usar get_context() para obter um objeto de contexto. Objetos de contexto têm a mesma API que o módulo multiprocessing e permitem que se usem vários métodos de início no mesmo programa.

import multiprocessing as mp

def foo(q):
    q.put('hello')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    ctx = mp.get_context('spawn')
    q = ctx.Queue()
    p = ctx.Process(target=foo, args=(q,))
    p.start()
    print(q.get())
    p.join()

Note que objetos relacionados a um contexto podem não ser compatíveis com processos para um contexto diferente. Em particular, travas criadas usando o contexto fork não podem ser passados ​​para processos iniciados usando os métodos de início spawn ou forkserver.

Uma biblioteca que deseja utilizar um método de início específico provavelmente deve utilizar get_context() para evitar interferir na escolha do usuário.

Aviso

Os métodos de início 'spawn' e 'forkserver' geralmente não podem ser usadas ​​com executáveis ​​“congelados” (por exemplo, binários produzidos por pacotes como PyInstaller e cx_Freeze) em sistemas POSIX. O método de início 'fork' pode funcionar se o código não usar threads.

Trocando objetos entre processos

multiprocessing tem suporte a dois tipos de canal de comunicação entre processos:

Filas

A classe Queue é quase um clone de queue.Queue. Por exemplo:

from multiprocessing import Process, Queue

def f(q):
    q.put([42, None, 'hello'])

if __name__ == '__main__':
    q = Queue()
    p = Process(target=f, args=(q,))
    p.start()
    print(q.get())    # prints "[42, None, 'hello']"
    p.join()

As filas são seguras para threads e processos. Qualquer objeto colocado em uma fila multiprocessing será serializado.

Encadeamentos

A função Pipe() retorna um par de objetos de conexão conectados por um encadeamento que por padrão é duplex (bidirecional). Por exemplo:

from multiprocessing import Process, Pipe

def f(conn):
    conn.send([42, None, 'hello'])
    conn.close()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parent_conn, child_conn = Pipe()
    p = Process(target=f, args=(child_conn,))
    p.start()
    print(parent_conn.recv())   # exibe "[42, None, 'hello']"
    p.join()

Os dois objetos de conexão retornados por Pipe() representam as duas extremidades do encadeamento. Cada objeto de conexão tem os métodos send() e recv() (entre outros). Observe que os dados em um encadeamento podem ser corrompidos se dois processos (ou threads) tentarem ler ou gravar na mesma extremidade do encadeamento ao mesmo tempo. Claro que não há risco de corrupção de processos usando extremidades diferentes do encadeamento ao mesmo tempo.

O método send() serializa o objeto e recv() recria o objeto.

Sincronização entre processos

multiprocessing contém equivalentes de todas as primitivas de sincronização de threading. Por exemplo, pode-se usar uma trava para garantir que apenas um processo exiba na saída padrão por vez:

from multiprocessing import Process, Lock

def f(l, i):
    l.acquire()
    try:
        print('hello world', i)
    finally:
        l.release()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    lock = Lock()

    for num in range(10):
        Process(target=f, args=(lock, num)).start()

Sem utilizar a saída da trava dos diferentes processos, é possível que tudo fique confuso.

Compartilhando estado entre processos

Conforme mencionado acima, ao fazer programação concorrente, geralmente é melhor evitar o uso de estado compartilhado, tanto quanto possível. Isso é particularmente verdadeiro ao utilizar múltiplos processos.

No entanto, se você realmente precisa utilizar algum compartilhamento de dados, então multiprocessing fornece algumas maneiras de se fazer isso.

Memória compartilhada

Os dados podem ser armazenados em um mapa de memória compartilhado utilizando Value ou Array. Por exemplo, o código a seguir

from multiprocessing import Process, Value, Array

def f(n, a):
    n.value = 3.1415927
    for i in range(len(a)):
        a[i] = -a[i]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    num = Value('d', 0.0)
    arr = Array('i', range(10))

    p = Process(target=f, args=(num, arr))
    p.start()
    p.join()

    print(num.value)
    print(arr[:])

vai exibir

3.1415927
[0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -9]

Os argumentos 'd' e 'i' usados ​​ao criar num e arr são typecodes do tipo usado pelo módulo array: 'd' indica um ponto flutuante de precisão dupla e 'i' indica um inteiro com sinal. Esses objetos compartilhados serão seguros para thread e processo.

Para mais flexibilidade no uso de memória compartilhada, pode-se utilizar o módulo multiprocessing.sharedctypes, que suporta a criação de objetos ctypes arbritários alocados da memória compartilhada.

Processo de servidor

Um objeto gerenciador retornado por Manager() controla um processo de servidor que contém objetos Python e permite que outros processos os manipulem usando proxies.

Um gerenciador retornado por Manager() vai oferecer suporte aos tipos list, dict, Namespace, Lock, RLock, Semaphore, BoundedSemaphore, Condition, Event, Barrier, Queue, Value e Array. Por exemplo,

from multiprocessing import Process, Manager

def f(d, l):
    d[1] = '1'
    d['2'] = 2
    d[0.25] = None
    l.reverse()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    with Manager() as manager:
        d = manager.dict()
        l = manager.list(range(10))

        p = Process(target=f, args=(d, l))
        p.start()
        p.join()

        print(d)
        print(l)

vai exibir

{0.25: None, 1: '1', '2': 2}
[9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0]

Os gerenciadores de processos de servidor são mais flexíveis do que usar objetos de memória compartilhada porque podem ser feitos para oferecer suporte a tipos de objetos arbitrários. Além disso, um único gerenciador pode ser compartilhado por processos em diferentes computadores em uma rede. Eles são, no entanto, mais lentos do que usar memória compartilhada.

Usando um pool de workers

A classe Pool representa um pool de processos de worker. Ela tem métodos que permitem que tarefas sejam descarregadas para os processos de worker de algumas maneiras diferentes.

Por exemplo:

from multiprocessing import Pool, TimeoutError
import time
import os

def f(x):
    return x*x

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # inicia 4 processos de trabalhador
    with Pool(processes=4) as pool:

        # exibe "[0, 1, 4,..., 81]"
        print(pool.map(f, range(10)))

        # exibe mesmo números em ordem arbitrária
        for i in pool.imap_unordered(f, range(10)):
            print(i)

        # calcula "f(20)" assincronamente
        res = pool.apply_async(f, (20,))      # executa em *apenas* um processo
        print(res.get(timeout=1))             # exibe "400"

        # calcula "os.getpid()" assincronamente
        res = pool.apply_async(os.getpid, ()) # executa em *apenas* um procsso
        print(res.get(timeout=1))             # exibe o PID daquele processo

        # iniciando vários cálculos de forma assíncrona *pod* usar mais procssos
        multiple_results = [pool.apply_async(os.getpid, ()) for i in range(4)]
        print([res.get(timeout=1) for res in multiple_results])

        # faz um único worker dormir por 10 segundos
        res = pool.apply_async(time.sleep, (10,))
        try:
            print(res.get(timeout=1))
        except TimeoutError:
            print("We lacked patience and got a multiprocessing.TimeoutError")

        print("For the moment, the pool remains available for more work")

    # saindo o bloco 'with' parou o pool
    print("Now the pool is closed and no longer available")

Observe que os métodos de um pool só devem ser usados ​​pelo processo que o criou.

Nota

A funcionalidade dentro deste pacote requer que o módulo __main__ seja importável pelos filhos. Isso é abordado em Programming guidelines, mas vale a pena apontar aqui. Isso significa que alguns exemplos, como os exemplos multiprocessing.pool.Pool não funcionarão no interpretador interativo. Por exemplo:

>>> from multiprocessing import Pool
>>> p = Pool(5)
>>> def f(x):
...     return x*x
...
>>> with p:
...     p.map(f, [1,2,3])
Process PoolWorker-1:
Process PoolWorker-2:
Process PoolWorker-3:
Traceback (most recent call last):
Traceback (most recent call last):
Traceback (most recent call last):
AttributeError: Can't get attribute 'f' on <module '__main__' (<class '_frozen_importlib.BuiltinImporter'>)>
AttributeError: Can't get attribute 'f' on <module '__main__' (<class '_frozen_importlib.BuiltinImporter'>)>
AttributeError: Can't get attribute 'f' on <module '__main__' (<class '_frozen_importlib.BuiltinImporter'>)>

(Se você tentar isso, na verdade, serão gerados três tracebaks completos intercalados de forma semi-aleatória, e então você pode ter que interromper o processo pai de alguma forma.)

Referência

O pacote multiprocessing replica principalmente a API do módulo threading.

Process e exceções

class multiprocessing.Process(group=None, target=None, name=None, args=(), kwargs={}, *, daemon=None)

Objetos processo representam atividades que são executadas em um processo separado. A classe Process possui equivalentes de todos os métodos de threading.Thread.

O construtor deve sempre ser chamado com argumentos nomeados. group deve sempre ser None; ele existe somente para compatibilidade com threading.Thread. target é o objeto chamável a ser invocado pelo método run(). O padrão é None, o que significa que nada é chamado. name é o nome do processo (veja name para mais detalhes). args é a tupla de argumento para a invocação de destino. kwargs é um dicionário de argumentos nomeados para a invocação de destino. Se fornecido, o argumento somente-nomeados daemon define o sinalizador do processo daemon como True ou False. Se None (o padrão), este sinalizador será herdado do processo de criação.

Por padrão, nenhum argumento é passado para target. O argumento args, que tem como padrão (), pode ser usado para especificar uma lista ou tupla de argumentos a serem passados ​​para target.

Se uma subclasse substitui o construtor, ela deve certificar-se de invocar o construtor da classe base (Process.__init__()) antes de fazer qualquer outra coisa no processo.

Alterado na versão 3.3: Adicionado o parâmetro daemon.

run()

Método que representa a atividade do processo.

Você pode substituir esse método em uma subclasse. O método padrão run() invoca o objeto chamável passado ao construtor do objeto como o argumento alvo, se houver, com argumentos nomeados e sequenciais retirados dos argumentos args e kwargs, respectivamente.

Usar uma lista ou tupla como argumento args passado para Process obtém o mesmo efeito.

Exemplo:

>>> from multiprocessing import Process
>>> p = Process(target=print, args=[1])
>>> p.run()
1
>>> p = Process(target=print, args=(1,))
>>> p.run()
1

start()

Inicia a atividade do processo.

Isso deve ser chamado no máximo uma vez por objeto processo. Ele organiza para que o método run() do objeto seja invocado em um processo separado.

join([timeout])

Se o argumento opcional timeout for None (o padrão), o método bloqueia até que o processo cujo método join() é chamado termine. Se timeout for um número positivo, ele bloqueia no máximo timeout segundos. Observe que o método retorna None se seu processo terminar ou se o método tiver tempo limite. Verifique o exitcode do processo para determinar se ele terminou.

Um processo pode ser usar “join” muitas vezes.

Um processo não pode se unir porque isso causaria um impasse. É um erro tentar se unir a um processo antes que ele tenha sido iniciado.

name

O nome do processo. O nome é uma string usada apenas para fins de identificação. Não tem semântica. Vários processos podem receber o mesmo nome.

O nome inicial é definido pelo construtor. Se nenhum nome explícito for fornecido ao construtor, um nome do formato ‘Processo-N₁:N₂:…:N_k’ é construído, onde cada N_k é o N-ésimo filho de seu pai.

is_alive()

Retorna se o processo está ativo.

Em termos gerais, um objeto processo está ativo desde o momento em que o método start() retorna até o término do processo filho.

daemon

O sinalizador daemon do processo, um valor Booleano. Isso deve ser definido antes de start() ser chamado.

O valor inicial é herdado do processo de criação.

Quando um processo sai, ele tenta encerrar todos os seus processos filhos daemônicos.

Note que um processo daemônico não tem permissão para criar processos filhos. Caso contrário, um processo daemônico deixaria seus filhos órfãos se ele fosse encerrado quando seu processo pai saísse. Além disso, esses não são daemons ou serviços Unix, eles são processos normais que serão encerrados (e em vez de usar “join”) se processos não daemônicos tiverem saído.

Além da API threading.Thread, os objetos Process também oferecem suporte aos seguintes atributos e métodos:

pid

Retorna o ID do processo. Antes do processo ser gerado, este será None.

exitcode

O código de saída da criança. Este será None se o processo ainda não tiver terminado.

Se o método run() da criança retornar normalmente, o código de saída será 0. Se ele terminar via sys.exit() com um argumento inteiro N, o código de saída será N.

Se a criança for encerrada devido a uma exceção não capturada em run(), o código de saída será 1. Se ela for encerrada pelo sinal N, o código de saída será o valor negativo -N.

authkey

A chave de autenticação do processo (uma string de bytes).

Quando multiprocessing é inicializado, o processo principal recebe uma string aleatória usando os.urandom().

Quando um objeto Process é criado, ele herda a chave de autenticação do seu processo pai, embora isso possa ser alterado definindo authkey para outra sequência de bytes.

Veja Authentication keys.

sentinel

Um identificador numérico de um objeto do sistema que ficará “pronto” quando o processo terminar.

Você pode usar esse valor se quiser esperar por vários eventos ao mesmo tempo usando multiprocessing.connection.wait(). Caso contrário, chamar join() é mais simples.

No Windows, este é um identificador de sistema operacional utilizável com a família de chamadas de API WaitForSingleObject e WaitForMultipleObjects. No POSIX, este é um descritor de arquivo utilizável com primitivos do módulo select.

Adicionado na versão 3.3.

terminate()

Termina o processo. No POSIX isso é feito usando o sinal SIGTERM; no Windows TerminateProcess() é usado. Note que os manipuladores de saída e cláusulas finally, etc., não serão executados.

Observe que os processos descendentes do processo não serão encerrados — eles simplesmente ficarão órfãos.

Aviso

Se esse método for usado quando o processo associado estiver usando um encadeamento ou fila, então o encadeamento ou fila é passível de ser corrompido e pode se tornar inutilizável por outro processo. Similarmente, se o processo adquiriu um trava ou semáforo etc., então encerrá-lo é passível de causar impasse em outros processos.

kill()

O mesmo que terminate(), mas usando o sinal SIGKILL no POSIX.

Adicionado na versão 3.7.

close()

Fecha o objeto Process, liberando todos os recursos associados a ele. ValueError é levantado se o processo subjacente ainda estiver em execução. Uma vez que close() retorne com sucesso, a maioria dos outros métodos e atributos do objeto Process levantará ValueError.

Adicionado na versão 3.7.

Observe que os métodos start(), join(), is_alive(), terminate() e exitcode devem ser chamados somente pelo processo que criou o objeto processo.

Exemplo de uso de alguns dos métodos de Process:

>>> import multiprocessing, time, signal
>>> mp_context = multiprocessing.get_context('spawn')
>>> p = mp_context.Process(target=time.sleep, args=(1000,))
>>> print(p, p.is_alive())
<...Process ... initial> False
>>> p.start()
>>> print(p, p.is_alive())
<...Process ... started> True
>>> p.terminate()
>>> time.sleep(0.1)
>>> print(p, p.is_alive())
<...Process ... stopped exitcode=-SIGTERM> False
>>> p.exitcode == -signal.SIGTERM
True

exception multiprocessing.ProcessError

A classe base de todas as exceções de multiprocessing.

exception multiprocessing.BufferTooShort

Exceção levantada por Connection.recv_bytes_into() quando o objeto buffer fornecido é muito pequeno para a mensagem lida.

Se e for uma instância de BufferTooShort, então e.args[0] retornará a mensagem como uma string de bytes.

exception multiprocessing.AuthenticationError

Levantada quando há um erro de autenticação.

exception multiprocessing.TimeoutError

Levantada por métodos com um tempo limite quando o tempo limite expira.

Encadeamentos e filas

Ao usar vários processos, geralmente é usada a passagem de mensagens para comunicação entre processos e evita-se ter que usar quaisquer primitivas de sincronização, como travas.

Para passar mensagens, pode-se usar Pipe() (para uma conexão entre dois processos) ou uma fila (que permite múltiplos produtores e consumidores).

Os tipos Queue, SimpleQueue e JoinableQueue são filas FIFO multiprodutoras e multiconsumidoras modeladas na classe queue.Queue da biblioteca padrão. Elas diferem porque Queue não tem os métodos task_done() e join() introduzidos na classe queue.Queue do Python 2.5.

Se você usar JoinableQueue, então você deve chamar JoinableQueue.task_done() para cada tarefa removida da fila, caso contrário, o semáforo usado para contar o número de tarefas não concluídas pode eventualmente transbordar, levantando uma exceção.

Uma diferença de outras implementações de filas no Python é que as filas do multiprocessing serializam todos os objetos que são colocados nelas usando pickle. O objeto retornado pelo método get é um objeto recriado que não compartilha memória com o objeto original.

Observe que também é possível criar uma fila compartilhada usando um objeto gerenciador — veja Gerenciadores.

Nota

multiprocessing usa as exceções usuais queue.Empty e queue.Full para sinalizar um tempo limite. Elas não estão disponíveis no espaço de nomes do multiprocessing, então você precisa importá-las de queue.

Nota

Quando um objeto é colocado em uma fila, o objeto é serializado com pickle e uma thread em segundo plano depois descarrega os dados serializados com pickle para um encadeamento subjacente. Isso tem algumas consequências que são um pouco surpreendentes, mas não devem causar nenhuma dificuldade prática – se elas realmente o incomodam, então você pode usar uma fila criada com um gerenciador.

1. Depois de colocar um objeto em uma fila vazia, pode haver um atraso infinitesimal antes que o método empty() da fila retorne False e ​​:meth:~Queue.get_nowait possa retornar sem levantar queue.Empty.

2. Se vários processos estiverem enfileirando objetos, é possível que os objetos sejam recebidos na outra extremidade fora de ordem. No entanto, objetos enfileirados pelo mesmo processo sempre estarão na ordem esperada em relação uns aos outros.

Aviso

Se um processo for morto usando Process.terminate() ou os.kill() enquanto estiver tentando usar uma Queue, os dados na fila provavelmente serão corrompidos. Isso pode fazer com que qualquer outro processo obtenha uma exceção quando tentar usar a fila mais tarde.

Aviso

Conforme mencionado acima, se um processo filho tiver colocado itens em uma fila (e não tiver usado JoinableQueue.cancel_join_thread), esse processo não será encerrado até que todos os itens armazenados em buffer tenham sido liberados para o encadeamento.

This means that if you try joining that process you may get a deadlock unless you are sure that all items which have been put on the queue have been consumed. Similarly, if the child process is non-daemonic then the parent process may hang on exit when it tries to join all its non-daemonic children.

Note that a queue created using a manager does not have this issue. See Programming guidelines.

For an example of the usage of queues for interprocess communication see Exemplos.

multiprocessing.Pipe([duplex])

Returns a pair (conn1, conn2) of Connection objects representing the ends of a pipe.

If duplex is True (the default) then the pipe is bidirectional. If duplex is False then the pipe is unidirectional: conn1 can only be used for receiving messages and conn2 can only be used for sending messages.

The send() method serializes the the object using pickle and the recv() re-creates the object.

class multiprocessing.Queue([maxsize])

Returns a process shared queue implemented using a pipe and a few locks/semaphores. When a process first puts an item on the queue a feeder thread is started which transfers objects from a buffer into the pipe.

The usual queue.Empty and queue.Full exceptions from the standard library’s queue module are raised to signal timeouts.

Queue implements all the methods of queue.Queue except for task_done() and join().

qsize()

Return the approximate size of the queue. Because of multithreading/multiprocessing semantics, this number is not reliable.

Note that this may raise NotImplementedError on platforms like macOS where sem_getvalue() is not implemented.

empty()

Return True if the queue is empty, False otherwise. Because of multithreading/multiprocessing semantics, this is not reliable.

May raise an OSError on closed queues. (not guaranteed)

full()

Return True if the queue is full, False otherwise. Because of multithreading/multiprocessing semantics, this is not reliable.

put(obj[, block[, timeout]])

Put obj into the queue. If the optional argument block is True (the default) and timeout is None (the default), block if necessary until a free slot is available. If timeout is a positive number, it blocks at most timeout seconds and raises the queue.Full exception if no free slot was available within that time. Otherwise (block is False), put an item on the queue if a free slot is immediately available, else raise the queue.Full exception (timeout is ignored in that case).

Alterado na versão 3.8: If the queue is closed, ValueError is raised instead of AssertionError.

put_nowait(obj)

Equivalent to put(obj, False).

get([block[, timeout]])

Remove and return an item from the queue. If optional args block is True (the default) and timeout is None (the default), block if necessary until an item is available. If timeout is a positive number, it blocks at most timeout seconds and raises the queue.Empty exception if no item was available within that time. Otherwise (block is False), return an item if one is immediately available, else raise the queue.Empty exception (timeout is ignored in that case).

Alterado na versão 3.8: If the queue is closed, ValueError is raised instead of OSError.

get_nowait()

Equivalente a get(False).

multiprocessing.Queue has a few additional methods not found in queue.Queue. These methods are usually unnecessary for most code:

close()

Indicate that no more data will be put on this queue by the current process. The background thread will quit once it has flushed all buffered data to the pipe. This is called automatically when the queue is garbage collected.

join_thread()

Join the background thread. This can only be used after close() has been called. It blocks until the background thread exits, ensuring that all data in the buffer has been flushed to the pipe.

By default if a process is not the creator of the queue then on exit it will attempt to join the queue’s background thread. The process can call cancel_join_thread() to make join_thread() do nothing.

cancel_join_thread()

Prevent join_thread() from blocking. In particular, this prevents the background thread from being joined automatically when the process exits – see join_thread().

A better name for this method might be allow_exit_without_flush(). It is likely to cause enqueued data to be lost, and you almost certainly will not need to use it. It is really only there if you need the current process to exit immediately without waiting to flush enqueued data to the underlying pipe, and you don’t care about lost data.

Nota

This class’s functionality requires a functioning shared semaphore implementation on the host operating system. Without one, the functionality in this class will be disabled, and attempts to instantiate a Queue will result in an ImportError. See bpo-3770 for additional information. The same holds true for any of the specialized queue types listed below.

class multiprocessing.SimpleQueue

It is a simplified Queue type, very close to a locked Pipe.

close()

Close the queue: release internal resources.

A queue must not be used anymore after it is closed. For example, get(), put() and empty() methods must no longer be called.

Adicionado na versão 3.9.

empty()

Retorna True se a fila estiver vazia, False caso contrário.

Always raises an OSError if the SimpleQueue is closed.

get()

Remove and return an item from the queue.

put(item)

Put item into the queue.

class multiprocessing.JoinableQueue([maxsize])

JoinableQueue, a Queue subclass, is a queue which additionally has task_done() and join() methods.

task_done()

Indicate that a formerly enqueued task is complete. Used by queue consumers. For each get() used to fetch a task, a subsequent call to task_done() tells the queue that the processing on the task is complete.

If a join() is currently blocking, it will resume when all items have been processed (meaning that a task_done() call was received for every item that had been put() into the queue).

Raises a ValueError if called more times than there were items placed in the queue.

join()

Block until all items in the queue have been gotten and processed.

The count of unfinished tasks goes up whenever an item is added to the queue. The count goes down whenever a consumer calls task_done() to indicate that the item was retrieved and all work on it is complete. When the count of unfinished tasks drops to zero, join() unblocks.

Diversos

multiprocessing.active_children()

Return list of all live children of the current process.

Calling this has the side effect of “joining” any processes which have already finished.

multiprocessing.cpu_count()

Return the number of CPUs in the system.

This number is not equivalent to the number of CPUs the current process can use. The number of usable CPUs can be obtained with os.process_cpu_count() (or len(os.sched_getaffinity(0))).

When the number of CPUs cannot be determined a NotImplementedError is raised.

Ver também

os.cpu_count() os.process_cpu_count()

Alterado na versão 3.13: The return value can also be overridden using the -X cpu_count flag or PYTHON_CPU_COUNT as this is merely a wrapper around the os cpu count APIs.

multiprocessing.current_process()

Return the Process object corresponding to the current process.

An analogue of threading.current_thread().

multiprocessing.parent_process()

Return the Process object corresponding to the parent process of the current_process(). For the main process, parent_process will be None.

Adicionado na versão 3.8.

multiprocessing.freeze_support()

Add support for when a program which uses multiprocessing has been frozen to produce a Windows executable. (Has been tested with py2exe, PyInstaller and cx_Freeze.)

One needs to call this function straight after the if __name__ == '__main__' line of the main module. For example:

from multiprocessing import Process, freeze_support

def f():
    print('hello world!')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    freeze_support()
    Process(target=f).start()

If the freeze_support() line is omitted then trying to run the frozen executable will raise RuntimeError.

Calling freeze_support() has no effect when invoked on any operating system other than Windows. In addition, if the module is being run normally by the Python interpreter on Windows (the program has not been frozen), then freeze_support() has no effect.

multiprocessing.get_all_start_methods()

Returns a list of the supported start methods, the first of which is the default. The possible start methods are 'fork', 'spawn' and 'forkserver'. Not all platforms support all methods. See Contextos e métodos de inicialização.

Adicionado na versão 3.4.

multiprocessing.get_context(method=None)

Return a context object which has the same attributes as the multiprocessing module.

If method is None then the default context is returned. Otherwise method should be 'fork', 'spawn', 'forkserver'. ValueError is raised if the specified start method is not available. See Contextos e métodos de inicialização.

Adicionado na versão 3.4.

multiprocessing.get_start_method(allow_none=False)

Return the name of start method used for starting processes.

If the start method has not been fixed and allow_none is false, then the start method is fixed to the default and the name is returned. If the start method has not been fixed and allow_none is true then None is returned.

The return value can be 'fork', 'spawn', 'forkserver' or None. See Contextos e métodos de inicialização.

Adicionado na versão 3.4.

Alterado na versão 3.8: On macOS, the spawn start method is now the default. The fork start method should be considered unsafe as it can lead to crashes of the subprocess. See bpo-33725.

multiprocessing.set_executable(executable)

Set the path of the Python interpreter to use when starting a child process. (By default sys.executable is used). Embedders will probably need to do some thing like

set_executable(os.path.join(sys.exec_prefix, 'pythonw.exe'))

before they can create child processes.

Alterado na versão 3.4: Now supported on POSIX when the 'spawn' start method is used.

Alterado na versão 3.11: Aceita um objeto caminho ou similar.

multiprocessing.set_forkserver_preload(module_names)

Set a list of module names for the forkserver main process to attempt to import so that their already imported state is inherited by forked processes. Any ImportError when doing so is silently ignored. This can be used as a performance enhancement to avoid repeated work in every process.

For this to work, it must be called before the forkserver process has been launched (before creating a Pool or starting a Process).

Only meaningful when using the 'forkserver' start method. See Contextos e métodos de inicialização.

Adicionado na versão 3.4.

multiprocessing.set_start_method(method, force=False)

Set the method which should be used to start child processes. The method argument can be 'fork', 'spawn' or 'forkserver'. Raises RuntimeError if the start method has already been set and force is not True. If method is None and force is True then the start method is set to None. If method is None and force is False then the context is set to the default context.

Note that this should be called at most once, and it should be protected inside the if __name__ == '__main__' clause of the main module.

See Contextos e métodos de inicialização.

Adicionado na versão 3.4.

Nota

multiprocessing contains no analogues of threading.active_count(), threading.enumerate(), threading.settrace(), threading.setprofile(), threading.Timer, or threading.local.

Connection Objects

Connection objects allow the sending and receiving of picklable objects or strings. They can be thought of as message oriented connected sockets.

Connection objects are usually created using Pipe – see also Listeners and Clients.

class multiprocessing.connection.Connection

send(obj)

Send an object to the other end of the connection which should be read using recv().

The object must be picklable. Very large pickles (approximately 32 MiB+, though it depends on the OS) may raise a ValueError exception.

recv()

Return an object sent from the other end of the connection using send(). Blocks until there is something to receive. Raises EOFError if there is nothing left to receive and the other end was closed.

fileno()

Return the file descriptor or handle used by the connection.

close()

Close the connection.

This is called automatically when the connection is garbage collected.

poll([timeout])

Return whether there is any data available to be read.

If timeout is not specified then it will return immediately. If timeout is a number then this specifies the maximum time in seconds to block. If timeout is None then an infinite timeout is used.

Note that multiple connection objects may be polled at once by using multiprocessing.connection.wait().

send_bytes(buffer[, offset[, size]])

Send byte data from a bytes-like object as a complete message.

If offset is given then data is read from that position in buffer. If size is given then that many bytes will be read from buffer. Very large buffers (approximately 32 MiB+, though it depends on the OS) may raise a ValueError exception

recv_bytes([maxlength])

Return a complete message of byte data sent from the other end of the connection as a string. Blocks until there is something to receive. Raises EOFError if there is nothing left to receive and the other end has closed.

If maxlength is specified and the message is longer than maxlength then OSError is raised and the connection will no longer be readable.

Alterado na versão 3.3: This function used to raise IOError, which is now an alias of OSError.

recv_bytes_into(buffer[, offset])

Read into buffer a complete message of byte data sent from the other end of the connection and return the number of bytes in the message. Blocks until there is something to receive. Raises EOFError if there is nothing left to receive and the other end was closed.

buffer must be a writable bytes-like object. If offset is given then the message will be written into the buffer from that position. Offset must be a non-negative integer less than the length of buffer (in bytes).

If the buffer is too short then a BufferTooShort exception is raised and the complete message is available as e.args[0] where e is the exception instance.

Alterado na versão 3.3: Connection objects themselves can now be transferred between processes using Connection.send() and Connection.recv().

Connection objects also now support the context management protocol – see Tipos de Gerenciador de Contexto. __enter__() returns the connection object, and __exit__() calls close().

Por exemplo:

>>> from multiprocessing import Pipe
>>> a, b = Pipe()
>>> a.send([1, 'hello', None])
>>> b.recv()
[1, 'hello', None]
>>> b.send_bytes(b'thank you')
>>> a.recv_bytes()
b'thank you'
>>> import array
>>> arr1 = array.array('i', range(5))
>>> arr2 = array.array('i', [0] * 10)
>>> a.send_bytes(arr1)
>>> count = b.recv_bytes_into(arr2)
>>> assert count == len(arr1) * arr1.itemsize
>>> arr2
array('i', [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0])

Aviso

The Connection.recv() method automatically unpickles the data it receives, which can be a security risk unless you can trust the process which sent the message.

Therefore, unless the connection object was produced using Pipe() you should only use the recv() and send() methods after performing some sort of authentication. See Authentication keys.

Aviso

If a process is killed while it is trying to read or write to a pipe then the data in the pipe is likely to become corrupted, because it may become impossible to be sure where the message boundaries lie.

Synchronization primitives

Generally synchronization primitives are not as necessary in a multiprocess program as they are in a multithreaded program. See the documentation for threading module.

Note that one can also create synchronization primitives by using a manager object – see Gerenciadores.

class multiprocessing.Barrier(parties[, action[, timeout]])

A barrier object: a clone of threading.Barrier.

Adicionado na versão 3.3.

class multiprocessing.BoundedSemaphore([value])

A bounded semaphore object: a close analog of threading.BoundedSemaphore.

A solitary difference from its close analog exists: its acquire method’s first argument is named block, as is consistent with Lock.acquire().

Nota

On macOS, this is indistinguishable from Semaphore because sem_getvalue() is not implemented on that platform.

class multiprocessing.Condition([lock])

A condition variable: an alias for threading.Condition.

If lock is specified then it should be a Lock or RLock object from multiprocessing.

Alterado na versão 3.3: The wait_for() method was added.

class multiprocessing.Event

A clone of threading.Event.

class multiprocessing.Lock

A non-recursive lock object: a close analog of threading.Lock. Once a process or thread has acquired a lock, subsequent attempts to acquire it from any process or thread will block until it is released; any process or thread may release it. The concepts and behaviors of threading.Lock as it applies to threads are replicated here in multiprocessing.Lock as it applies to either processes or threads, except as noted.

Note that Lock is actually a factory function which returns an instance of multiprocessing.synchronize.Lock initialized with a default context.

Lock supports the context manager protocol and thus may be used in with statements.

acquire(block=True, timeout=None)

Acquire a lock, blocking or non-blocking.

With the block argument set to True (the default), the method call will block until the lock is in an unlocked state, then set it to locked and return True. Note that the name of this first argument differs from that in threading.Lock.acquire().

With the block argument set to False, the method call does not block. If the lock is currently in a locked state, return False; otherwise set the lock to a locked state and return True.

When invoked with a positive, floating-point value for timeout, block for at most the number of seconds specified by timeout as long as the lock can not be acquired. Invocations with a negative value for timeout are equivalent to a timeout of zero. Invocations with a timeout value of None (the default) set the timeout period to infinite. Note that the treatment of negative or None values for timeout differs from the implemented behavior in threading.Lock.acquire(). The timeout argument has no practical implications if the block argument is set to False and is thus ignored. Returns True if the lock has been acquired or False if the timeout period has elapsed.

release()

Release a lock. This can be called from any process or thread, not only the process or thread which originally acquired the lock.

Behavior is the same as in threading.Lock.release() except that when invoked on an unlocked lock, a ValueError is raised.

class multiprocessing.RLock

A recursive lock object: a close analog of threading.RLock. A recursive lock must be released by the process or thread that acquired it. Once a process or thread has acquired a recursive lock, the same process or thread may acquire it again without blocking; that process or thread must release it once for each time it has been acquired.

Note that RLock is actually a factory function which returns an instance of multiprocessing.synchronize.RLock initialized with a default context.

RLock supports the context manager protocol and thus may be used in with statements.

acquire(block=True, timeout=None)

Acquire a lock, blocking or non-blocking.

When invoked with the block argument set to True, block until the lock is in an unlocked state (not owned by any process or thread) unless the lock is already owned by the current process or thread. The current process or thread then takes ownership of the lock (if it does not already have ownership) and the recursion level inside the lock increments by one, resulting in a return value of True. Note that there are several differences in this first argument’s behavior compared to the implementation of threading.RLock.acquire(), starting with the name of the argument itself.

When invoked with the block argument set to False, do not block. If the lock has already been acquired (and thus is owned) by another process or thread, the current process or thread does not take ownership and the recursion level within the lock is not changed, resulting in a return value of False. If the lock is in an unlocked state, the current process or thread takes ownership and the recursion level is incremented, resulting in a return value of True.

Use and behaviors of the timeout argument are the same as in Lock.acquire(). Note that some of these behaviors of timeout differ from the implemented behaviors in threading.RLock.acquire().

release()

Release a lock, decrementing the recursion level. If after the decrement the recursion level is zero, reset the lock to unlocked (not owned by any process or thread) and if any other processes or threads are blocked waiting for the lock to become unlocked, allow exactly one of them to proceed. If after the decrement the recursion level is still nonzero, the lock remains locked and owned by the calling process or thread.

Only call this method when the calling process or thread owns the lock. An AssertionError is raised if this method is called by a process or thread other than the owner or if the lock is in an unlocked (unowned) state. Note that the type of exception raised in this situation differs from the implemented behavior in threading.RLock.release().

class multiprocessing.Semaphore([value])

A semaphore object: a close analog of threading.Semaphore.

A solitary difference from its close analog exists: its acquire method’s first argument is named block, as is consistent with Lock.acquire().

Nota

On macOS, sem_timedwait is unsupported, so calling acquire() with a timeout will emulate that function’s behavior using a sleeping loop.

Nota

Some of this package’s functionality requires a functioning shared semaphore implementation on the host operating system. Without one, the multiprocessing.synchronize module will be disabled, and attempts to import it will result in an ImportError. See bpo-3770 for additional information.

Shared ctypes Objects

It is possible to create shared objects using shared memory which can be inherited by child processes.

multiprocessing.Value(typecode_or_type, *args, lock=True)

Return a ctypes object allocated from shared memory. By default the return value is actually a synchronized wrapper for the object. The object itself can be accessed via the value attribute of a Value.

typecode_or_type determines the type of the returned object: it is either a ctypes type or a one character typecode of the kind used by the array module. *args is passed on to the constructor for the type.

If lock is True (the default) then a new recursive lock object is created to synchronize access to the value. If lock is a Lock or RLock object then that will be used to synchronize access to the value. If lock is False then access to the returned object will not be automatically protected by a lock, so it will not necessarily be “process-safe”.

Operations like += which involve a read and write are not atomic. So if, for instance, you want to atomically increment a shared value it is insufficient to just do

counter.value += 1

Assuming the associated lock is recursive (which it is by default) you can instead do

with counter.get_lock():
    counter.value += 1

Note that lock is a keyword-only argument.

multiprocessing.Array(typecode_or_type, size_or_initializer, *, lock=True)

Return a ctypes array allocated from shared memory. By default the return value is actually a synchronized wrapper for the array.

typecode_or_type determines the type of the elements of the returned array: it is either a ctypes type or a one character typecode of the kind used by the array module. If size_or_initializer is an integer, then it determines the length of the array, and the array will be initially zeroed. Otherwise, size_or_initializer is a sequence which is used to initialize the array and whose length determines the length of the array.

If lock is True (the default) then a new lock object is created to synchronize access to the value. If lock is a Lock or RLock object then that will be used to synchronize access to the value. If lock is False then access to the returned object will not be automatically protected by a lock, so it will not necessarily be “process-safe”.

Note that lock is a keyword only argument.

Note that an array of ctypes.c_char has value and raw attributes which allow one to use it to store and retrieve strings.

The multiprocessing.sharedctypes module

The multiprocessing.sharedctypes module provides functions for allocating ctypes objects from shared memory which can be inherited by child processes.

Nota

Although it is possible to store a pointer in shared memory remember that this will refer to a location in the address space of a specific process. However, the pointer is quite likely to be invalid in the context of a second process and trying to dereference the pointer from the second process may cause a crash.

multiprocessing.sharedctypes.RawArray(typecode_or_type, size_or_initializer)

Return a ctypes array allocated from shared memory.

typecode_or_type determines the type of the elements of the returned array: it is either a ctypes type or a one character typecode of the kind used by the array module. If size_or_initializer is an integer then it determines the length of the array, and the array will be initially zeroed. Otherwise size_or_initializer is a sequence which is used to initialize the array and whose length determines the length of the array.

Note that setting and getting an element is potentially non-atomic – use Array() instead to make sure that access is automatically synchronized using a lock.

multiprocessing.sharedctypes.RawValue(typecode_or_type, *args)

Return a ctypes object allocated from shared memory.

typecode_or_type determines the type of the returned object: it is either a ctypes type or a one character typecode of the kind used by the array module. *args is passed on to the constructor for the type.

Note that setting and getting the value is potentially non-atomic – use Value() instead to make sure that access is automatically synchronized using a lock.

Note that an array of ctypes.c_char has value and raw attributes which allow one to use it to store and retrieve strings – see documentation for ctypes.

multiprocessing.sharedctypes.Array(typecode_or_type, size_or_initializer, *, lock=True)

The same as RawArray() except that depending on the value of lock a process-safe synchronization wrapper may be returned instead of a raw ctypes array.

If lock is True (the default) then a new lock object is created to synchronize access to the value. If lock is a Lock or RLock object then that will be used to synchronize access to the value. If lock is False then access to the returned object will not be automatically protected by a lock, so it will not necessarily be “process-safe”.

Note that lock is a keyword-only argument.

multiprocessing.sharedctypes.Value(typecode_or_type, *args, lock=True)

The same as RawValue() except that depending on the value of lock a process-safe synchronization wrapper may be returned instead of a raw ctypes object.

If lock is True (the default) then a new lock object is created to synchronize access to the value. If lock is a Lock or RLock object then that will be used to synchronize access to the value. If lock is False then access to the returned object will not be automatically protected by a lock, so it will not necessarily be “process-safe”.

Note that lock is a keyword-only argument.

multiprocessing.sharedctypes.copy(obj)

Return a ctypes object allocated from shared memory which is a copy of the ctypes object obj.

multiprocessing.sharedctypes.synchronized(obj[, lock])

Return a process-safe wrapper object for a ctypes object which uses lock to synchronize access. If lock is None (the default) then a multiprocessing.RLock object is created automatically.

A synchronized wrapper will have two methods in addition to those of the object it wraps: get_obj() returns the wrapped object and get_lock() returns the lock object used for synchronization.

Note that accessing the ctypes object through the wrapper can be a lot slower than accessing the raw ctypes object.

Alterado na versão 3.5: Synchronized objects support the context manager protocol.

The table below compares the syntax for creating shared ctypes objects from shared memory with the normal ctypes syntax. (In the table MyStruct is some subclass of ctypes.Structure.)

ctypes	sharedctypes using type	sharedctypes using typecode
c_double(2.4)	RawValue(c_double, 2.4)	RawValue(‘d’, 2.4)
MyStruct(4, 6)	RawValue(MyStruct, 4, 6)
(c_short * 7)()	RawArray(c_short, 7)	RawArray(‘h’, 7)
(c_int * 3)(9, 2, 8)	RawArray(c_int, (9, 2, 8))	RawArray(‘i’, (9, 2, 8))

Below is an example where a number of ctypes objects are modified by a child process:

from multiprocessing import Process, Lock
from multiprocessing.sharedctypes import Value, Array
from ctypes import Structure, c_double

class Point(Structure):
    _fields_ = [('x', c_double), ('y', c_double)]

def modify(n, x, s, A):
    n.value **= 2
    x.value **= 2
    s.value = s.value.upper()
    for a in A:
        a.x **= 2
        a.y **= 2

if __name__ == '__main__':
    lock = Lock()

    n = Value('i', 7)
    x = Value(c_double, 1.0/3.0, lock=False)
    s = Array('c', b'hello world', lock=lock)
    A = Array(Point, [(1.875,-6.25), (-5.75,2.0), (2.375,9.5)], lock=lock)

    p = Process(target=modify, args=(n, x, s, A))
    p.start()
    p.join()

    print(n.value)
    print(x.value)
    print(s.value)
    print([(a.x, a.y) for a in A])

The results printed are

49
0.1111111111111111
HELLO WORLD
[(3.515625, 39.0625), (33.0625, 4.0), (5.640625, 90.25)]

Gerenciadores

Managers provide a way to create data which can be shared between different processes, including sharing over a network between processes running on different machines. A manager object controls a server process which manages shared objects. Other processes can access the shared objects by using proxies.

multiprocessing.Manager()

Returns a started SyncManager object which can be used for sharing objects between processes. The returned manager object corresponds to a spawned child process and has methods which will create shared objects and return corresponding proxies.

Manager processes will be shutdown as soon as they are garbage collected or their parent process exits. The manager classes are defined in the multiprocessing.managers module:

class multiprocessing.managers.BaseManager(address=None, authkey=None, serializer='pickle', ctx=None, *, shutdown_timeout=1.0)

Criando um objeto BaseManager.

Once created one should call start() or get_server().serve_forever() to ensure that the manager object refers to a started manager process.

address is the address on which the manager process listens for new connections. If address is None then an arbitrary one is chosen.

authkey is the authentication key which will be used to check the validity of incoming connections to the server process. If authkey is None then current_process().authkey is used. Otherwise authkey is used and it must be a byte string.

serializer must be 'pickle' (use pickle serialization) or 'xmlrpclib' (use xmlrpc.client serialization).

ctx is a context object, or None (use the current context). See the get_context() function.

shutdown_timeout is a timeout in seconds used to wait until the process used by the manager completes in the shutdown() method. If the shutdown times out, the process is terminated. If terminating the process also times out, the process is killed.

Alterado na versão 3.11: Added the shutdown_timeout parameter.

start([initializer[, initargs]])

Start a subprocess to start the manager. If initializer is not None then the subprocess will call initializer(*initargs) when it starts.

get_server()

Returns a Server object which represents the actual server under the control of the Manager. The Server object supports the serve_forever() method:

>>> from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager
>>> manager = BaseManager(address=('', 50000), authkey=b'abc')
>>> server = manager.get_server()
>>> server.serve_forever()

Server additionally has an address attribute.

connect()

Connect a local manager object to a remote manager process:

>>> from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager
>>> m = BaseManager(address=('127.0.0.1', 50000), authkey=b'abc')
>>> m.connect()

shutdown()

Stop the process used by the manager. This is only available if start() has been used to start the server process.

This can be called multiple times.

register(typeid[, callable[, proxytype[, exposed[, method_to_typeid[, create_method]]]]])

A classmethod which can be used for registering a type or callable with the manager class.

typeid is a “type identifier” which is used to identify a particular type of shared object. This must be a string.

callable is a callable used for creating objects for this type identifier. If a manager instance will be connected to the server using the connect() method, or if the create_method argument is False then this can be left as None.

proxytype is a subclass of BaseProxy which is used to create proxies for shared objects with this typeid. If None then a proxy class is created automatically.

exposed is used to specify a sequence of method names which proxies for this typeid should be allowed to access using BaseProxy._callmethod(). (If exposed is None then proxytype._exposed_ is used instead if it exists.) In the case where no exposed list is specified, all “public methods” of the shared object will be accessible. (Here a “public method” means any attribute which has a __call__() method and whose name does not begin with '_'.)

method_to_typeid is a mapping used to specify the return type of those exposed methods which should return a proxy. It maps method names to typeid strings. (If method_to_typeid is None then proxytype._method_to_typeid_ is used instead if it exists.) If a method’s name is not a key of this mapping or if the mapping is None then the object returned by the method will be copied by value.

create_method determines whether a method should be created with name typeid which can be used to tell the server process to create a new shared object and return a proxy for it. By default it is True.

BaseManager instances also have one read-only property:

address

The address used by the manager.

Alterado na versão 3.3: Manager objects support the context management protocol – see Tipos de Gerenciador de Contexto. __enter__() starts the server process (if it has not already started) and then returns the manager object. __exit__() calls shutdown().

In previous versions __enter__() did not start the manager’s server process if it was not already started.

class multiprocessing.managers.SyncManager

A subclass of BaseManager which can be used for the synchronization of processes. Objects of this type are returned by multiprocessing.Manager().

Its methods create and return Proxy Objects for a number of commonly used data types to be synchronized across processes. This notably includes shared lists and dictionaries.

Barrier(parties[, action[, timeout]])

Create a shared threading.Barrier object and return a proxy for it.

Adicionado na versão 3.3.

BoundedSemaphore([value])

Create a shared threading.BoundedSemaphore object and return a proxy for it.

Condition([lock])

Create a shared threading.Condition object and return a proxy for it.

If lock is supplied then it should be a proxy for a threading.Lock or threading.RLock object.

Alterado na versão 3.3: The wait_for() method was added.

Event()

Create a shared threading.Event object and return a proxy for it.

Lock()

Create a shared threading.Lock object and return a proxy for it.

Namespace()

Create a shared Namespace object and return a proxy for it.

Queue([maxsize])

Create a shared queue.Queue object and return a proxy for it.

RLock()

Create a shared threading.RLock object and return a proxy for it.

Semaphore([value])

Create a shared threading.Semaphore object and return a proxy for it.

Array(typecode, sequence)

Create an array and return a proxy for it.

Value(typecode, value)

Create an object with a writable value attribute and return a proxy for it.

dict()

dict(mapping)

dict(sequence)

Create a shared dict object and return a proxy for it.

list()

list(sequence)

Create a shared list object and return a proxy for it.

Alterado na versão 3.6: Shared objects are capable of being nested. For example, a shared container object such as a shared list can contain other shared objects which will all be managed and synchronized by the SyncManager.

class multiprocessing.managers.Namespace

A type that can register with SyncManager.

A namespace object has no public methods, but does have writable attributes. Its representation shows the values of its attributes.

However, when using a proxy for a namespace object, an attribute beginning with '_' will be an attribute of the proxy and not an attribute of the referent:

>>> mp_context = multiprocessing.get_context('spawn')
>>> manager = mp_context.Manager()
>>> Global = manager.Namespace()
>>> Global.x = 10
>>> Global.y = 'hello'
>>> Global._z = 12.3    # this is an attribute of the proxy
>>> print(Global)
Namespace(x=10, y='hello')

Customized managers

To create one’s own manager, one creates a subclass of BaseManager and uses the register() classmethod to register new types or callables with the manager class. For example:

from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager

class MathsClass:
    def add(self, x, y):
        return x + y
    def mul(self, x, y):
        return x * y

class MyManager(BaseManager):
    pass

MyManager.register('Maths', MathsClass)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    with MyManager() as manager:
        maths = manager.Maths()
        print(maths.add(4, 3))         # prints 7
        print(maths.mul(7, 8))         # prints 56

Using a remote manager

It is possible to run a manager server on one machine and have clients use it from other machines (assuming that the firewalls involved allow it).

Running the following commands creates a server for a single shared queue which remote clients can access:

>>> from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager
>>> from queue import Queue
>>> queue = Queue()
>>> class QueueManager(BaseManager): pass
>>> QueueManager.register('get_queue', callable=lambda:queue)
>>> m = QueueManager(address=('', 50000), authkey=b'abracadabra')
>>> s = m.get_server()
>>> s.serve_forever()

One client can access the server as follows:

>>> from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager
>>> class QueueManager(BaseManager): pass
>>> QueueManager.register('get_queue')
>>> m = QueueManager(address=('foo.bar.org', 50000), authkey=b'abracadabra')
>>> m.connect()
>>> queue = m.get_queue()
>>> queue.put('hello')

Another client can also use it:

>>> from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager
>>> class QueueManager(BaseManager): pass
>>> QueueManager.register('get_queue')
>>> m = QueueManager(address=('foo.bar.org', 50000), authkey=b'abracadabra')
>>> m.connect()
>>> queue = m.get_queue()
>>> queue.get()
'hello'

Local processes can also access that queue, using the code from above on the client to access it remotely:

>>> from multiprocessing import Process, Queue
>>> from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager
>>> class Worker(Process):
...     def __init__(self, q):
...         self.q = q
...         super().__init__()
...     def run(self):
...         self.q.put('local hello')
...
>>> queue = Queue()
>>> w = Worker(queue)
>>> w.start()
>>> class QueueManager(BaseManager): pass
...
>>> QueueManager.register('get_queue', callable=lambda: queue)
>>> m = QueueManager(address=('', 50000), authkey=b'abracadabra')
>>> s = m.get_server()
>>> s.serve_forever()

Proxy Objects

A proxy is an object which refers to a shared object which lives (presumably) in a different process. The shared object is said to be the referent of the proxy. Multiple proxy objects may have the same referent.

A proxy object has methods which invoke corresponding methods of its referent (although not every method of the referent will necessarily be available through the proxy). In this way, a proxy can be used just like its referent can:

>>> mp_context = multiprocessing.get_context('spawn')
>>> manager = mp_context.Manager()
>>> l = manager.list([i*i for i in range(10)])
>>> print(l)
[0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81]
>>> print(repr(l))
<ListProxy object, typeid 'list' at 0x...>
>>> l[4]
16
>>> l[2:5]
[4, 9, 16]

Notice that applying str() to a proxy will return the representation of the referent, whereas applying repr() will return the representation of the proxy.

An important feature of proxy objects is that they are picklable so they can be passed between processes. As such, a referent can contain Proxy Objects. This permits nesting of these managed lists, dicts, and other Proxy Objects:

>>> a = manager.list()
>>> b = manager.list()
>>> a.append(b)         # referent of a now contains referent of b
>>> print(a, b)
[<ListProxy object, typeid 'list' at ...>] []
>>> b.append('hello')
>>> print(a[0], b)
['hello'] ['hello']

Similarly, dict and list proxies may be nested inside one another:

>>> l_outer = manager.list([ manager.dict() for i in range(2) ])
>>> d_first_inner = l_outer[0]
>>> d_first_inner['a'] = 1
>>> d_first_inner['b'] = 2
>>> l_outer[1]['c'] = 3
>>> l_outer[1]['z'] = 26
>>> print(l_outer[0])
{'a': 1, 'b': 2}
>>> print(l_outer[1])
{'c': 3, 'z': 26}

If standard (non-proxy) list or dict objects are contained in a referent, modifications to those mutable values will not be propagated through the manager because the proxy has no way of knowing when the values contained within are modified. However, storing a value in a container proxy (which triggers a __setitem__ on the proxy object) does propagate through the manager and so to effectively modify such an item, one could re-assign the modified value to the container proxy:

# create a list proxy and append a mutable object (a dictionary)
lproxy = manager.list()
lproxy.append({})
# now mutate the dictionary
d = lproxy[0]
d['a'] = 1
d['b'] = 2
# at this point, the changes to d are not yet synced, but by
# updating the dictionary, the proxy is notified of the change
lproxy[0] = d

This approach is perhaps less convenient than employing nested Proxy Objects for most use cases but also demonstrates a level of control over the synchronization.

Nota

The proxy types in multiprocessing do nothing to support comparisons by value. So, for instance, we have:

>>> manager.list([1,2,3]) == [1,2,3]
False

One should just use a copy of the referent instead when making comparisons.

class multiprocessing.managers.BaseProxy

Proxy objects are instances of subclasses of BaseProxy.

_callmethod(methodname[, args[, kwds]])

Call and return the result of a method of the proxy’s referent.

If proxy is a proxy whose referent is obj then the expression

proxy._callmethod(methodname, args, kwds)

will evaluate the expression

getattr(obj, methodname)(*args, **kwds)

in the manager’s process.

The returned value will be a copy of the result of the call or a proxy to a new shared object – see documentation for the method_to_typeid argument of BaseManager.register().

If an exception is raised by the call, then is re-raised by _callmethod(). If some other exception is raised in the manager’s process then this is converted into a RemoteError exception and is raised by _callmethod().

Note in particular that an exception will be raised if methodname has not been exposed.

An example of the usage of _callmethod():

>>> l = manager.list(range(10))
>>> l._callmethod('__len__')
10
>>> l._callmethod('__getitem__', (slice(2, 7),)) # equivalent to l[2:7]
[2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
>>> l._callmethod('__getitem__', (20,))          # equivalent to l[20]
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
IndexError: list index out of range

_getvalue()

Return a copy of the referent.

If the referent is unpicklable then this will raise an exception.

__repr__()

Return a representation of the proxy object.

__str__()

Return the representation of the referent.

Limpeza

A proxy object uses a weakref callback so that when it gets garbage collected it deregisters itself from the manager which owns its referent.

A shared object gets deleted from the manager process when there are no longer any proxies referring to it.

Process Pools

One can create a pool of processes which will carry out tasks submitted to it with the Pool class.

class multiprocessing.pool.Pool([processes[, initializer[, initargs[, maxtasksperchild[, context]]]]])

A process pool object which controls a pool of worker processes to which jobs can be submitted. It supports asynchronous results with timeouts and callbacks and has a parallel map implementation.

processes is the number of worker processes to use. If processes is None then the number returned by os.process_cpu_count() is used.

If initializer is not None then each worker process will call initializer(*initargs) when it starts.

maxtasksperchild is the number of tasks a worker process can complete before it will exit and be replaced with a fresh worker process, to enable unused resources to be freed. The default maxtasksperchild is None, which means worker processes will live as long as the pool.

context can be used to specify the context used for starting the worker processes. Usually a pool is created using the function multiprocessing.Pool() or the Pool() method of a context object. In both cases context is set appropriately.

Note that the methods of the pool object should only be called by the process which created the pool.

Aviso

multiprocessing.pool objects have internal resources that need to be properly managed (like any other resource) by using the pool as a context manager or by calling close() and terminate() manually. Failure to do this can lead to the process hanging on finalization.

Note that it is not correct to rely on the garbage collector to destroy the pool as CPython does not assure that the finalizer of the pool will be called (see object.__del__() for more information).

Alterado na versão 3.2: Added the maxtasksperchild parameter.

Alterado na versão 3.4: Adicionado o parâmetro context.

Alterado na versão 3.13: processes uses os.process_cpu_count() by default, instead of os.cpu_count().

Nota

Worker processes within a Pool typically live for the complete duration of the Pool’s work queue. A frequent pattern found in other systems (such as Apache, mod_wsgi, etc) to free resources held by workers is to allow a worker within a pool to complete only a set amount of work before being exiting, being cleaned up and a new process spawned to replace the old one. The maxtasksperchild argument to the Pool exposes this ability to the end user.

apply(func[, args[, kwds]])

Call func with arguments args and keyword arguments kwds. It blocks until the result is ready. Given this blocks, apply_async() is better suited for performing work in parallel. Additionally, func is only executed in one of the workers of the pool.

apply_async(func[, args[, kwds[, callback[, error_callback]]]])

A variant of the apply() method which returns a AsyncResult object.

If callback is specified then it should be a callable which accepts a single argument. When the result becomes ready callback is applied to it, that is unless the call failed, in which case the error_callback is applied instead.

If error_callback is specified then it should be a callable which accepts a single argument. If the target function fails, then the error_callback is called with the exception instance.

Callbacks should complete immediately since otherwise the thread which handles the results will get blocked.

map(func, iterable[, chunksize])

A parallel equivalent of the map() built-in function (it supports only one iterable argument though, for multiple iterables see starmap()). It blocks until the result is ready.

This method chops the iterable into a number of chunks which it submits to the process pool as separate tasks. The (approximate) size of these chunks can be specified by setting chunksize to a positive integer.

Note that it may cause high memory usage for very long iterables. Consider using imap() or imap_unordered() with explicit chunksize option for better efficiency.

map_async(func, iterable[, chunksize[, callback[, error_callback]]])

A variant of the map() method which returns a AsyncResult object.

If callback is specified then it should be a callable which accepts a single argument. When the result becomes ready callback is applied to it, that is unless the call failed, in which case the error_callback is applied instead.

If error_callback is specified then it should be a callable which accepts a single argument. If the target function fails, then the error_callback is called with the exception instance.

Callbacks should complete immediately since otherwise the thread which handles the results will get blocked.

imap(func, iterable[, chunksize])

A lazier version of map().

The chunksize argument is the same as the one used by the map() method. For very long iterables using a large value for chunksize can make the job complete much faster than using the default value of 1.

Also if chunksize is 1 then the next() method of the iterator returned by the imap() method has an optional timeout parameter: next(timeout) will raise multiprocessing.TimeoutError if the result cannot be returned within timeout seconds.

imap_unordered(func, iterable[, chunksize])

The same as imap() except that the ordering of the results from the returned iterator should be considered arbitrary. (Only when there is only one worker process is the order guaranteed to be “correct”.)

starmap(func, iterable[, chunksize])

Like map() except that the elements of the iterable are expected to be iterables that are unpacked as arguments.

Hence an iterable of [(1,2), (3, 4)] results in [func(1,2), func(3,4)].

Adicionado na versão 3.3.

starmap_async(func, iterable[, chunksize[, callback[, error_callback]]])

A combination of starmap() and map_async() that iterates over iterable of iterables and calls func with the iterables unpacked. Returns a result object.

Adicionado na versão 3.3.

close()

Prevents any more tasks from being submitted to the pool. Once all the tasks have been completed the worker processes will exit.

terminate()

Stops the worker processes immediately without completing outstanding work. When the pool object is garbage collected terminate() will be called immediately.

join()

Wait for the worker processes to exit. One must call close() or terminate() before using join().

Alterado na versão 3.3: Pool objects now support the context management protocol – see Tipos de Gerenciador de Contexto. __enter__() returns the pool object, and __exit__() calls terminate().

class multiprocessing.pool.AsyncResult

The class of the result returned by Pool.apply_async() and Pool.map_async().

get([timeout])

Return the result when it arrives. If timeout is not None and the result does not arrive within timeout seconds then multiprocessing.TimeoutError is raised. If the remote call raised an exception then that exception will be reraised by get().

wait([timeout])

Wait until the result is available or until timeout seconds pass.

ready()

Return whether the call has completed.

successful()

Return whether the call completed without raising an exception. Will raise ValueError if the result is not ready.

Alterado na versão 3.7: If the result is not ready, ValueError is raised instead of AssertionError.

The following example demonstrates the use of a pool:

from multiprocessing import Pool
import time

def f(x):
    return x*x

if __name__ == '__main__':
    with Pool(processes=4) as pool:         # start 4 worker processes
        result = pool.apply_async(f, (10,)) # evaluate "f(10)" asynchronously in a single process
        print(result.get(timeout=1))        # prints "100" unless your computer is *very* slow

        print(pool.map(f, range(10)))       # prints "[0, 1, 4,..., 81]"

        it = pool.imap(f, range(10))
        print(next(it))                     # prints "0"
        print(next(it))                     # prints "1"
        print(it.next(timeout=1))           # prints "4" unless your computer is *very* slow

        result = pool.apply_async(time.sleep, (10,))
        print(result.get(timeout=1))        # raises multiprocessing.TimeoutError

Listeners and Clients

Usually message passing between processes is done using queues or by using Connection objects returned by Pipe().

However, the multiprocessing.connection module allows some extra flexibility. It basically gives a high level message oriented API for dealing with sockets or Windows named pipes. It also has support for digest authentication using the hmac module, and for polling multiple connections at the same time.

multiprocessing.connection.deliver_challenge(connection, authkey)

Send a randomly generated message to the other end of the connection and wait for a reply.

If the reply matches the digest of the message using authkey as the key then a welcome message is sent to the other end of the connection. Otherwise AuthenticationError is raised.

multiprocessing.connection.answer_challenge(connection, authkey)

Receive a message, calculate the digest of the message using authkey as the key, and then send the digest back.

If a welcome message is not received, then AuthenticationError is raised.

multiprocessing.connection.Client(address[, family[, authkey]])

Attempt to set up a connection to the listener which is using address address, returning a Connection.

The type of the connection is determined by family argument, but this can generally be omitted since it can usually be inferred from the format of address. (See Formatos de Endereços)

If authkey is given and not None, it should be a byte string and will be used as the secret key for an HMAC-based authentication challenge. No authentication is done if authkey is None. AuthenticationError is raised if authentication fails. See Authentication keys.

class multiprocessing.connection.Listener([address[, family[, backlog[, authkey]]]])

A wrapper for a bound socket or Windows named pipe which is ‘listening’ for connections.

address is the address to be used by the bound socket or named pipe of the listener object.

Nota

If an address of ‘0.0.0.0’ is used, the address will not be a connectable end point on Windows. If you require a connectable end-point, you should use ‘127.0.0.1’.

family is the type of socket (or named pipe) to use. This can be one of the strings 'AF_INET' (for a TCP socket), 'AF_UNIX' (for a Unix domain socket) or 'AF_PIPE' (for a Windows named pipe). Of these only the first is guaranteed to be available. If family is None then the family is inferred from the format of address. If address is also None then a default is chosen. This default is the family which is assumed to be the fastest available. See Formatos de Endereços. Note that if family is 'AF_UNIX' and address is None then the socket will be created in a private temporary directory created using tempfile.mkstemp().

If the listener object uses a socket then backlog (1 by default) is passed to the listen() method of the socket once it has been bound.

If authkey is given and not None, it should be a byte string and will be used as the secret key for an HMAC-based authentication challenge. No authentication is done if authkey is None. AuthenticationError is raised if authentication fails. See Authentication keys.

accept()

Accept a connection on the bound socket or named pipe of the listener object and return a Connection object. If authentication is attempted and fails, then AuthenticationError is raised.

close()

Close the bound socket or named pipe of the listener object. This is called automatically when the listener is garbage collected. However it is advisable to call it explicitly.

Listener objects have the following read-only properties:

address

The address which is being used by the Listener object.

last_accepted

The address from which the last accepted connection came. If this is unavailable then it is None.

Alterado na versão 3.3: Listener objects now support the context management protocol – see Tipos de Gerenciador de Contexto. __enter__() returns the listener object, and __exit__() calls close().

multiprocessing.connection.wait(object_list, timeout=None)

Wait till an object in object_list is ready. Returns the list of those objects in object_list which are ready. If timeout is a float then the call blocks for at most that many seconds. If timeout is None then it will block for an unlimited period. A negative timeout is equivalent to a zero timeout.

For both POSIX and Windows, an object can appear in object_list if it is

• a readable Connection object;

• a connected and readable socket.socket object; or

• the sentinel attribute of a Process object.

A connection or socket object is ready when there is data available to be read from it, or the other end has been closed.

POSIX: wait(object_list, timeout) almost equivalent select.select(object_list, [], [], timeout). The difference is that, if select.select() is interrupted by a signal, it can raise OSError with an error number of EINTR, whereas wait() will not.

Windows: An item in object_list must either be an integer handle which is waitable (according to the definition used by the documentation of the Win32 function WaitForMultipleObjects()) or it can be an object with a fileno() method which returns a socket handle or pipe handle. (Note that pipe handles and socket handles are not waitable handles.)

Adicionado na versão 3.3.

Examples

The following server code creates a listener which uses 'secret password' as an authentication key. It then waits for a connection and sends some data to the client:

from multiprocessing.connection import Listener
from array import array

address = ('localhost', 6000)     # family is deduced to be 'AF_INET'

with Listener(address, authkey=b'secret password') as listener:
    with listener.accept() as conn:
        print('connection accepted from', listener.last_accepted)

        conn.send([2.25, None, 'junk', float])

        conn.send_bytes(b'hello')

        conn.send_bytes(array('i', [42, 1729]))

The following code connects to the server and receives some data from the server:

from multiprocessing.connection import Client
from array import array

address = ('localhost', 6000)

with Client(address, authkey=b'secret password') as conn:
    print(conn.recv())                  # => [2.25, None, 'junk', float]

    print(conn.recv_bytes())            # => 'hello'

    arr = array('i', [0, 0, 0, 0, 0])
    print(conn.recv_bytes_into(arr))    # => 8
    print(arr)                          # => array('i', [42, 1729, 0, 0, 0])

The following code uses wait() to wait for messages from multiple processes at once:

from multiprocessing import Process, Pipe, current_process
from multiprocessing.connection import wait

def foo(w):
    for i in range(10):
        w.send((i, current_process().name))
    w.close()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    readers = []

    for i in range(4):
        r, w = Pipe(duplex=False)
        readers.append(r)
        p = Process(target=foo, args=(w,))
        p.start()
        # We close the writable end of the pipe now to be sure that
        # p is the only process which owns a handle for it.  This
        # ensures that when p closes its handle for the writable end,
        # wait() will promptly report the readable end as being ready.
        w.close()

    while readers:
        for r in wait(readers):
            try:
                msg = r.recv()
            except EOFError:
                readers.remove(r)
            else:
                print(msg)

Formatos de Endereços

• Um endereço 'AF_INET' é uma tupla na forma de (hostname, port) sendo hostname uma string e port um inteiro.

• An 'AF_UNIX' address is a string representing a filename on the filesystem.

• An 'AF_PIPE' address is a string of the form r'\\.\pipe\PipeName'. To use Client() to connect to a named pipe on a remote computer called ServerName one should use an address of the form r'\\ServerName\pipe\PipeName' instead.

Note that any string beginning with two backslashes is assumed by default to be an 'AF_PIPE' address rather than an 'AF_UNIX' address.

Authentication keys

When one uses Connection.recv, the data received is automatically unpickled. Unfortunately unpickling data from an untrusted source is a security risk. Therefore Listener and Client() use the hmac module to provide digest authentication.

An authentication key is a byte string which can be thought of as a password: once a connection is established both ends will demand proof that the other knows the authentication key. (Demonstrating that both ends are using the same key does not involve sending the key over the connection.)

If authentication is requested but no authentication key is specified then the return value of current_process().authkey is used (see Process). This value will be automatically inherited by any Process object that the current process creates. This means that (by default) all processes of a multi-process program will share a single authentication key which can be used when setting up connections between themselves.

Suitable authentication keys can also be generated by using os.urandom().

Gerando logs

Some support for logging is available. Note, however, that the logging package does not use process shared locks so it is possible (depending on the handler type) for messages from different processes to get mixed up.

multiprocessing.get_logger()

Returns the logger used by multiprocessing. If necessary, a new one will be created.

When first created the logger has level logging.NOTSET and no default handler. Messages sent to this logger will not by default propagate to the root logger.

Note that on Windows child processes will only inherit the level of the parent process’s logger – any other customization of the logger will not be inherited.

multiprocessing.log_to_stderr(level=None)

This function performs a call to get_logger() but in addition to returning the logger created by get_logger, it adds a handler which sends output to sys.stderr using format '[%(levelname)s/%(processName)s] %(message)s'. You can modify levelname of the logger by passing a level argument.

Below is an example session with logging turned on:

>>> import multiprocessing, logging
>>> logger = multiprocessing.log_to_stderr()
>>> logger.setLevel(logging.INFO)
>>> logger.warning('doomed')
[WARNING/MainProcess] doomed
>>> m = multiprocessing.Manager()
[INFO/SyncManager-...] child process calling self.run()
[INFO/SyncManager-...] created temp directory /.../pymp-...
[INFO/SyncManager-...] manager serving at '/.../listener-...'
>>> del m
[INFO/MainProcess] sending shutdown message to manager
[INFO/SyncManager-...] manager exiting with exitcode 0

For a full table of logging levels, see the logging module.

The multiprocessing.dummy module

multiprocessing.dummy replicates the API of multiprocessing but is no more than a wrapper around the threading module.

In particular, the Pool function provided by multiprocessing.dummy returns an instance of ThreadPool, which is a subclass of Pool that supports all the same method calls but uses a pool of worker threads rather than worker processes.

class multiprocessing.pool.ThreadPool([processes[, initializer[, initargs]]])

A thread pool object which controls a pool of worker threads to which jobs can be submitted. ThreadPool instances are fully interface compatible with Pool instances, and their resources must also be properly managed, either by using the pool as a context manager or by calling close() and terminate() manually.

processes is the number of worker threads to use. If processes is None then the number returned by os.process_cpu_count() is used.

If initializer is not None then each worker process will call initializer(*initargs) when it starts.

Unlike Pool, maxtasksperchild and context cannot be provided.

Nota

A ThreadPool shares the same interface as Pool, which is designed around a pool of processes and predates the introduction of the concurrent.futures module. As such, it inherits some operations that don’t make sense for a pool backed by threads, and it has its own type for representing the status of asynchronous jobs, AsyncResult, that is not understood by any other libraries.

Users should generally prefer to use concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor, which has a simpler interface that was designed around threads from the start, and which returns concurrent.futures.Future instances that are compatible with many other libraries, including asyncio.

Programming guidelines

There are certain guidelines and idioms which should be adhered to when using multiprocessing.

All start methods

The following applies to all start methods.

Avoid shared state

As far as possible one should try to avoid shifting large amounts of data between processes.

It is probably best to stick to using queues or pipes for communication between processes rather than using the lower level synchronization primitives.

Picklability

Ensure that the arguments to the methods of proxies are picklable.

Thread safety of proxies

Do not use a proxy object from more than one thread unless you protect it with a lock.

(There is never a problem with different processes using the same proxy.)

Joining zombie processes

On POSIX when a process finishes but has not been joined it becomes a zombie. There should never be very many because each time a new process starts (or active_children() is called) all completed processes which have not yet been joined will be joined. Also calling a finished process’s Process.is_alive will join the process. Even so it is probably good practice to explicitly join all the processes that you start.

Better to inherit than pickle/unpickle

When using the spawn or forkserver start methods many types from multiprocessing need to be picklable so that child processes can use them. However, one should generally avoid sending shared objects to other processes using pipes or queues. Instead you should arrange the program so that a process which needs access to a shared resource created elsewhere can inherit it from an ancestor process.

Avoid terminating processes

Using the Process.terminate method to stop a process is liable to cause any shared resources (such as locks, semaphores, pipes and queues) currently being used by the process to become broken or unavailable to other processes.

Therefore it is probably best to only consider using Process.terminate on processes which never use any shared resources.

Joining processes that use queues

Bear in mind that a process that has put items in a queue will wait before terminating until all the buffered items are fed by the “feeder” thread to the underlying pipe. (The child process can call the Queue.cancel_join_thread method of the queue to avoid this behaviour.)

This means that whenever you use a queue you need to make sure that all items which have been put on the queue will eventually be removed before the process is joined. Otherwise you cannot be sure that processes which have put items on the queue will terminate. Remember also that non-daemonic processes will be joined automatically.

An example which will deadlock is the following:

from multiprocessing import Process, Queue

def f(q):
    q.put('X' * 1000000)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    queue = Queue()
    p = Process(target=f, args=(queue,))
    p.start()
    p.join()                    # this deadlocks
    obj = queue.get()

A fix here would be to swap the last two lines (or simply remove the p.join() line).

Explicitly pass resources to child processes

On POSIX using the fork start method, a child process can make use of a shared resource created in a parent process using a global resource. However, it is better to pass the object as an argument to the constructor for the child process.

Apart from making the code (potentially) compatible with Windows and the other start methods this also ensures that as long as the child process is still alive the object will not be garbage collected in the parent process. This might be important if some resource is freed when the object is garbage collected in the parent process.

So for instance

from multiprocessing import Process, Lock

def f():
    ... do something using "lock" ...

if __name__ == '__main__':
    lock = Lock()
    for i in range(10):
        Process(target=f).start()

should be rewritten as

from multiprocessing import Process, Lock

def f(l):
    ... do something using "l" ...

if __name__ == '__main__':
    lock = Lock()
    for i in range(10):
        Process(target=f, args=(lock,)).start()

Beware of replacing sys.stdin with a “file like object”

multiprocessing originally unconditionally called:

os.close(sys.stdin.fileno())

in the multiprocessing.Process._bootstrap() method — this resulted in issues with processes-in-processes. This has been changed to:

sys.stdin.close()
sys.stdin = open(os.open(os.devnull, os.O_RDONLY), closefd=False)

Which solves the fundamental issue of processes colliding with each other resulting in a bad file descriptor error, but introduces a potential danger to applications which replace sys.stdin() with a “file-like object” with output buffering. This danger is that if multiple processes call close() on this file-like object, it could result in the same data being flushed to the object multiple times, resulting in corruption.

If you write a file-like object and implement your own caching, you can make it fork-safe by storing the pid whenever you append to the cache, and discarding the cache when the pid changes. For example:

@property
def cache(self):
    pid = os.getpid()
    if pid != self._pid:
        self._pid = pid
        self._cache = []
    return self._cache

For more information, see bpo-5155, bpo-5313 and bpo-5331

The spawn and forkserver start methods

There are a few extra restrictions which don’t apply to the fork start method.

More picklability

Ensure that all arguments to Process.__init__() are picklable. Also, if you subclass Process then make sure that instances will be picklable when the Process.start method is called.

Global variables

Bear in mind that if code run in a child process tries to access a global variable, then the value it sees (if any) may not be the same as the value in the parent process at the time that Process.start was called.

However, global variables which are just module level constants cause no problems.

Safe importing of main module

Make sure that the main module can be safely imported by a new Python interpreter without causing unintended side effects (such as starting a new process).

For example, using the spawn or forkserver start method running the following module would fail with a RuntimeError:

from multiprocessing import Process

def foo():
    print('hello')

p = Process(target=foo)
p.start()

Instead one should protect the “entry point” of the program by using if __name__ == '__main__': as follows:

from multiprocessing import Process, freeze_support, set_start_method

def foo():
    print('hello')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    freeze_support()
    set_start_method('spawn')
    p = Process(target=foo)
    p.start()

(The freeze_support() line can be omitted if the program will be run normally instead of frozen.)

This allows the newly spawned Python interpreter to safely import the module and then run the module’s foo() function.

Similar restrictions apply if a pool or manager is created in the main module.

Exemplos

Demonstration of how to create and use customized managers and proxies:

from multiprocessing import freeze_support
from multiprocessing.managers import BaseManager, BaseProxy
import operator

##

class Foo:
    def f(self):
        print('you called Foo.f()')
    def g(self):
        print('you called Foo.g()')
    def _h(self):
        print('you called Foo._h()')

# A simple generator function
def baz():
    for i in range(10):
        yield i*i

# Proxy type for generator objects
class GeneratorProxy(BaseProxy):
    _exposed_ = ['__next__']
    def __iter__(self):
        return self
    def __next__(self):
        return self._callmethod('__next__')

# Function to return the operator module
def get_operator_module():
    return operator

##

class MyManager(BaseManager):
    pass

# register the Foo class; make `f()` and `g()` accessible via proxy
MyManager.register('Foo1', Foo)

# register the Foo class; make `g()` and `_h()` accessible via proxy
MyManager.register('Foo2', Foo, exposed=('g', '_h'))

# register the generator function baz; use `GeneratorProxy` to make proxies
MyManager.register('baz', baz, proxytype=GeneratorProxy)

# register get_operator_module(); make public functions accessible via proxy
MyManager.register('operator', get_operator_module)

##

def test():
    manager = MyManager()
    manager.start()

    print('-' * 20)

    f1 = manager.Foo1()
    f1.f()
    f1.g()
    assert not hasattr(f1, '_h')
    assert sorted(f1._exposed_) == sorted(['f', 'g'])

    print('-' * 20)

    f2 = manager.Foo2()
    f2.g()
    f2._h()
    assert not hasattr(f2, 'f')
    assert sorted(f2._exposed_) == sorted(['g', '_h'])

    print('-' * 20)

    it = manager.baz()
    for i in it:
        print('<%d>' % i, end=' ')
    print()

    print('-' * 20)

    op = manager.operator()
    print('op.add(23, 45) =', op.add(23, 45))
    print('op.pow(2, 94) =', op.pow(2, 94))
    print('op._exposed_ =', op._exposed_)

##

if __name__ == '__main__':
    freeze_support()
    test()

Using Pool:

import multiprocessing
import time
import random
import sys

#
# Functions used by test code
#

def calculate(func, args):
    result = func(*args)
    return '%s says that %s%s = %s' % (
        multiprocessing.current_process().name,
        func.__name__, args, result
        )

def calculatestar(args):
    return calculate(*args)

def mul(a, b):
    time.sleep(0.5 * random.random())
    return a * b

def plus(a, b):
    time.sleep(0.5 * random.random())
    return a + b

def f(x):
    return 1.0 / (x - 5.0)

def pow3(x):
    return x ** 3

def noop(x):
    pass

#
# Test code
#

def test():
    PROCESSES = 4
    print('Creating pool with %d processes\n' % PROCESSES)

    with multiprocessing.Pool(PROCESSES) as pool:
        #
        # Tests
        #

        TASKS = [(mul, (i, 7)) for i in range(10)] + \
                [(plus, (i, 8)) for i in range(10)]

        results = [pool.apply_async(calculate, t) for t in TASKS]
        imap_it = pool.imap(calculatestar, TASKS)
        imap_unordered_it = pool.imap_unordered(calculatestar, TASKS)

        print('Ordered results using pool.apply_async():')
        for r in results:
            print('\t', r.get())
        print()

        print('Ordered results using pool.imap():')
        for x in imap_it:
            print('\t', x)
        print()

        print('Unordered results using pool.imap_unordered():')
        for x in imap_unordered_it:
            print('\t', x)
        print()

        print('Ordered results using pool.map() --- will block till complete:')
        for x in pool.map(calculatestar, TASKS):
            print('\t', x)
        print()

        #
        # Test error handling
        #

        print('Testing error handling:')

        try:
            print(pool.apply(f, (5,)))
        except ZeroDivisionError:
            print('\tGot ZeroDivisionError as expected from pool.apply()')
        else:
            raise AssertionError('expected ZeroDivisionError')

        try:
            print(pool.map(f, list(range(10))))
        except ZeroDivisionError:
            print('\tGot ZeroDivisionError as expected from pool.map()')
        else:
            raise AssertionError('expected ZeroDivisionError')

        try:
            print(list(pool.imap(f, list(range(10)))))
        except ZeroDivisionError:
            print('\tGot ZeroDivisionError as expected from list(pool.imap())')
        else:
            raise AssertionError('expected ZeroDivisionError')

        it = pool.imap(f, list(range(10)))
        for i in range(10):
            try:
                x = next(it)
            except ZeroDivisionError:
                if i == 5:
                    pass
            except StopIteration:
                break
            else:
                if i == 5:
                    raise AssertionError('expected ZeroDivisionError')

        assert i == 9
        print('\tGot ZeroDivisionError as expected from IMapIterator.next()')
        print()

        #
        # Testing timeouts
        #

        print('Testing ApplyResult.get() with timeout:', end=' ')
        res = pool.apply_async(calculate, TASKS[0])
        while 1:
            sys.stdout.flush()
            try:
                sys.stdout.write('\n\t%s' % res.get(0.02))
                break
            except multiprocessing.TimeoutError:
                sys.stdout.write('.')
        print()
        print()

        print('Testing IMapIterator.next() with timeout:', end=' ')
        it = pool.imap(calculatestar, TASKS)
        while 1:
            sys.stdout.flush()
            try:
                sys.stdout.write('\n\t%s' % it.next(0.02))
            except StopIteration:
                break
            except multiprocessing.TimeoutError:
                sys.stdout.write('.')
        print()
        print()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    multiprocessing.freeze_support()
    test()

An example showing how to use queues to feed tasks to a collection of worker processes and collect the results:

import time
import random

from multiprocessing import Process, Queue, current_process, freeze_support

#
# Function run by worker processes
#

def worker(input, output):
    for func, args in iter(input.get, 'STOP'):
        result = calculate(func, args)
        output.put(result)

#
# Function used to calculate result
#

def calculate(func, args):
    result = func(*args)
    return '%s says that %s%s = %s' % \
        (current_process().name, func.__name__, args, result)

#
# Functions referenced by tasks
#

def mul(a, b):
    time.sleep(0.5*random.random())
    return a * b

def plus(a, b):
    time.sleep(0.5*random.random())
    return a + b

#
#
#

def test():
    NUMBER_OF_PROCESSES = 4
    TASKS1 = [(mul, (i, 7)) for i in range(20)]
    TASKS2 = [(plus, (i, 8)) for i in range(10)]

    # Create queues
    task_queue = Queue()
    done_queue = Queue()

    # Submit tasks
    for task in TASKS1:
        task_queue.put(task)

    # Start worker processes
    for i in range(NUMBER_OF_PROCESSES):
        Process(target=worker, args=(task_queue, done_queue)).start()

    # Get and print results
    print('Unordered results:')
    for i in range(len(TASKS1)):
        print('\t', done_queue.get())

    # Add more tasks using `put()`
    for task in TASKS2:
        task_queue.put(task)

    # Get and print some more results
    for i in range(len(TASKS2)):
        print('\t', done_queue.get())

    # Tell child processes to stop
    for i in range(NUMBER_OF_PROCESSES):
        task_queue.put('STOP')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    freeze_support()
    test()