torproject / stem

Python controller library for Tor
https://stem.torproject.org/
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0
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Remove asyncio metaprogramming #77

Open atagar opened 3 years ago

atagar commented 3 years ago

To transparently support both synchronous and asynchronous usage we use metaprogrmming. Basically, our mixin matches method calls to the context type we run within.

When a synchronous controller is used within an event handler we mistakenly treat it as being asynchronous. For example...

from stem.control import Controller, EventType

with Controller.from_port() as controller:
  controller.authenticate()
  print(controller.get_version())  # this prints our version

  def listener_func(event):
   print(controller.get_version())  # this prints "<coroutine object Controller.get_version at 0x7f87d29da640>"

  controller.add_event_listener(listener_func, EventType.BW)

  input()

The trouble here is that our listener invokes within our controller, which is an asynchronous context. Needless to say, this is confusing as hell.

I'm going to revisit and likely remove our asyncio metaprogramming. It's complicated, breaks type checks, and liable to keep causing problems. Pitching this on the python list and stack overflow I get the sense that this isn't a promising approach long term.

atagar commented 3 years ago

Unfortunately I moved on from Tor before finishing this. My plan was to revert the Controller back to being synchronous, but with an async msg method and asynchronous socket objects (that is to say, async low level components with a synchronous wrapper). I spent a month on this but it's not yet done...

https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/atagar/stem.git/log/?h=bug77