Is it possible to subclass Lock() objects in Python? If not, other ways to debug deadlock?

Question

So, I've got a multithreaded python program, which is currently suffering from deadlock. I was going to log lock acquiring by subclassing threading.Lock objects:

import traceback
class DebugLock(threading.Lock):
    def acquire(self):
        print >>sys.stderr, "acquired", self
        #traceback.print_tb
        threading.Lock.acquire(self)  
    def release(self):
        print >>sys.stderr, "released", self
        #traceback.print_tb
        threading.Lock.release(self)  

When I try to run the program, I get the following error:

    class DebugLock(threading.Lock):
TypeError: Error when calling the metaclass bases
    cannot create 'builtin_function_or_method' instances  

So, my question is twofold:

1. Is it possible to subclass Lock objects to do what I'm doing?

2. If not, what is the best way to debug deadlock in python?

Note: I'm not writing any Python extension. There's a similar question: How to debug deadlock with python? However, it deals with compiling C++ code and using GDB, which I can't do since my code is pure python.

Answer 1

Russ answered the important question (#2), I'll answer question #1.

Doesn't appear to be possible. threading.Lock() is a factory function (documentation). It calls thread.allocate_lock() - there's no control over Lock object creation. You also cannot monkeypatch the thread.LockType class definition (the class skeleton exposed in thread.pi).

>>> thread.LockType.foo = "blah"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: can't set attributes of built-in/extension type 'thread.lock'

Answer 2

You could just use the "has a lock" versus "is a lock" approach, like so:

import threading, traceback, sys
class DebugLock(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self._lock = threading.Lock()
    def acquire(self):
        print("acquired", self)
        #traceback.print_tb
        self._lock.acquire()
    def release(self):
        print("released", self)
        #traceback.print_tb
        self._lock.release()
    def __enter__(self):
        self.acquire()
    def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
        self.release()

where I've thrown in the appropriate context guards since you likely want to use the with syntax with your locks (who wouldn't?).

Usage shown below:

    >>> lock = DebugLock()
    >>> with lock:
    ...     print("I'm atomic!")
    ... 
    acquired <__main__.DebugLock object at 0x7f8590e50190>
    I'm atomic!
    released <__main__.DebugLock object at 0x7f8590e50190>
    >>>