Profiling once active/enabled cannot be deactivated/disabled

[misyntropy]

In my script, I use profiling to keep track:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pr = Profile()
    pr.enable()
    #...
    #My code
    #...
    pr.disable()
    s = io.StringIO()
    sortby = pstats.SortKey.CUMULATIVE
    ps = pstats.Stats(pr, stream=s).sort_stats(sortby)
    ps.print_stats()
    ps.dump_stats("../run.prof")

If I encounter an error and this script doesn't run to completion, and I try to run again (after fixing the problem but that's not required here), I encounter this error at the pr.enable() line.

ValueError: Another profiling tool is already active

At this point, even if I run pr.disable() or even del pr, this error never goes away. The only thing that works is to restart the kernel itself.

Is this a bug? Is this a bad practice that I should not do (if so, what's the standard practice?)?

[misyntropy]

Okay I skipped a couple of steps and hence may have filed this in the wrong location - I'm following the Spyder troubleshooting guide and I first got it in Spyder. Then I tried qtconsole and got the error there as well, which is why I opened this issue.

But just now I tried it in IPython and again got the error. So now I ran it in the Python interpreter using exec(open('mainrunner.py').read()) and still get the same problem - the profiling state cannot be disabled, reset, removed or anything else seemingly. Obviously running an entirely different instance of Python with python mainrunner.py does not show this problem.

What should I do? It feels like I'm doing something wrong here.

[misyntropy]

Hello? Bump!

[ccordoba12]

I think the only solution is to restart the kernel after fixing the error to get rid of the previous profiling session and start all over again.

[misyntropy]

@ccordoba12 This sounds bad — what is the point of the disable method then? Where does the profiling data burrow itself —which seems to be a pretty deep place — that restarting the kernel is the only option??

[ccordoba12]

I don't know what the disable method does or doesn't do, but the error you posted is quite clear:

ValueError: Another profiling tool is already active

As long as there is a profiling session active, you can't start another one. And the only way to do that is by restarting the kernel, I guess.

[misyntropy]

Noted.

Since it sounds pretty wrong to me, where would you recommend I go next to resolve ambiguity in the "I guess" part of your answer?

https://github.com/ipython/ipython ?
https://github.com/python/cpython ?

Thanks!