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

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.