RuntimeError: main thread is not in main loop

Question

When I call

self.client = ThreadedClient() 

in my Python program, I get the error

"RuntimeError: main thread is not in main loop"

I have already done some googling, but I am making an error somehow ... Can someone please help me out?

Full error:

Exception in thread Thread-1:
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 530, in __bootstrap_inner
    File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 483, in run
    File "/Users/Wim/Bird Swarm/bird_swarm.py", line 156, in workerGuiThread
    self.root.after(200, self.workerGuiThread)
    File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 501, in after
    File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-tk/Tkinter.py", line 1098, in _register
    RuntimeError: main thread is not in main loop

Classes:

class ThreadedClient(object):

    def __init__(self):
        self.queue = Queue.Queue( )
        self.gui = GuiPart(self.queue, self.endApplication)
        self.root = self.gui.getRoot()
        self.running = True
        self.GuiThread = threading.Thread(target=self.workerGuiThread) 
        self.GuiThread.start()

    def workerGuiThread(self):
        while self.running:
            self.root.after(200, self.workerGuiThread)
            self.gui.processIncoming( )     

    def endApplication(self): 
        self.running = False

    def tc_TekenVogel(self,vogel):
        self.queue.put(vogel)

class GuiPart(object):
    def __init__(self, queue, endCommand): 
        self.queue = queue
        self.root = Tkinter.Tk()
        Tkinter.Canvas(self.root,width=g_groottescherm,height=g_groottescherm).pack()
        Tkinter.Button(self.root, text="Move 1 tick", command=self.doSomething).pack()
        self.vogelcords = {} #register of bird and their corresponding coordinates 

    def getRoot(self):
        return self.root

    def doSomething():
        pass #button action

    def processIncoming(self):
        while self.queue.qsize( ):
            try:
                msg = self.queue.get(0)
                try:
                    vogel = msg
                    l = vogel.geeflocatie()
                    if self.vogelcords.has_key(vogel):
                        cirkel = self.vogelcords[vogel]
                        self.gcanvas.coords(cirkel,l.geefx()-g_groottevogel,l.geefy()-g_groottevogel,l.geefx()+g_groottevogel,l.geefy()+g_groottevogel)            
                    else:
                        cirkel = self.gcanvas.create_oval(l.geefx()-g_groottevogel,l.geefy()-g_groottevogel,l.geefx()+g_groottevogel,l.geefy()+g_groottevogel,fill='red',outline='black',width=1)
                        self.vogelcords[vogel] = cirkel 
                    self.gcanvas.update()
                except:
                    print('Failed, was van het type %' % type(msg))
            except Queue.Empty:
                pass

Answer 1

Since all this did help my problem but did not solve it completely here is an additional thing to keep in mind:

In my case I started off importing the pyplot library in many threads and using it there. After moving all the library calls to my main thread I still got that error.

I did get rid of it by removing all import statements of that library in other files used in other threads. Even if they did not use the library the same error was caused by it.

Answer 2

I know this is late, but I set my thread to a Daemon, and no exception was raised:

t = threading.Thread(target=your_func)
t.setDaemon(True)
t.start()

Answer 3

You're running your main GUI loop in a thread besides the main thread. You cannot do this.

The docs mention offhandedly in a few places that Tkinter is not quite thread safe, but as far as I know, never quite come out and say that you can only talk to Tk from the main thread. The reason is that the truth is somewhat complicated. Tkinter itself is thread-safe, but it's hard to use in a multithreaded way. The closest to official documentation on this seems to be this page:

Q. Is there an alternative to Tkinter that is thread safe?

Tkinter?

Just run all UI code in the main thread, and let the writers write to a Queue object…

(The sample code given isn't great, but it's enough to figure out what they're suggesting and do things properly.)

There actually is a thread-safe alternative to Tkinter, mtTkinter. And its docs actually explain the situation pretty well:

Although Tkinter is technically thread-safe (assuming Tk is built with --enable-threads), practically speaking there are still problems when used in multithreaded Python applications. The problems stem from the fact that the _tkinter module attempts to gain control of the main thread via a polling technique when processing calls from other threads.

I believe this is exactly what you're seeing: your Tkinter code in Thread-1 is trying to peek into the main thread to find the main loop, and it's not there.

So, here are some options:

• Do what the Tkinter docs recommend and use TkInter from the main thread. Possibly by moving your current main thread code into a worker thread.
• If you're using some other library that wants to take over the main thread (e.g., twisted), it may have a way to integrate with Tkinter, in which case you should use that.
• Use mkTkinter to solve the problem.

Also, while I didn't find any exact duplicates of this question, there are a number of related questions on SO. See this question, this answer, and many more for more information.