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nycdunz · May 23, 2005, 12:58 PM

was wondering if anyone know what this is? Its constantly using around 95 - 100% of my CPU...

its under OS X 10.4.1, not sure if i remember seeing this being there before...

Chuckit · May 23, 2005, 01:09 PM

Are you running BitTorrent? Python is a programming language, BitTorrent being the most popular app I know of that uses it.

alphasubzero949 · May 23, 2005, 01:11 PM

Do you have the TV tracker widget?

Millennium · May 23, 2005, 03:07 PM

Python is a programming language which comes with OSX. Like Java, it compiles to a form of bytecode which is then interpreted with a program that has the same name as the programming language, and that is the python process you're seeing. Although it tends to run a bit slower than Java, it starts up much more quickly, and Apple uses it for a few system functions. For example, when you fax images from the Print dialog, a lot of the code to handle this is written in Python. However, this is not the most common way to get a Python process running on your machine; that honor goes to BitTorrent.

Most BitTorrent clients are written in Python, because that's what the official client uses. On Macs, both the official client and Tomato Torrent use a bridge called PyObjC to write Cocoa apps in Python instead of Objective-C. It's very unusual for BitTorrent clients to use up that much CPU, however.

I haven't encountered this "TV Tracker" widget that alpha mentions. From what I can tell from the Website, though, it does seem to use Python, and therefore it probably uses PyObjC too. This said, would it really use that much CPU time just parsing an HTML page?

Nexus5 · May 23, 2005, 04:33 PM

Had the same problem. When the TV Tracker widget tries to get information from the internet and fails (cause you are not connected, for example) python seems to stall.

nexus5.

Eug Wanker · May 23, 2005, 05:54 PM

If TV Tracker is stuck (no internet access), then python uses zero % CPU on my machine. If TV Tracker is downloading info, python never goes above 20% on my 1 GHz TiBook. Usually much less than 10% actually.

macintologist · May 23, 2005, 06:18 PM

Originally Posted by Millennium

Python is a programming language which comes with OSX. Like Java, it compiles to a form of bytecode which is then interpreted with a program that has the same name as the programming language, and that is the python process you're seeing. Although it tends to run a bit slower than Java, it starts up much more quickly, and Apple uses it for a few system functions. For example, when you fax images from the Print dialog, a lot of the code to handle this is written in Python. However, this is not the most common way to get a Python process running on your machine; that honor goes to BitTorrent.

How do you know all this?

saddino · May 23, 2005, 06:36 PM

Originally Posted by Millennium

I haven't encountered this "TV Tracker" widget that alpha mentions. From what I can tell from the Website, though, it does seem to use Python, and therefore it probably uses PyObjC too. This said, would it really use that much CPU time just parsing an HTML page?

TV Tracker doesn't use PyObjC, but rather includes uncompiled python programs inside its widget bundle. The widget then makes system calls (via widget.system) from its JavaScript to run these various subprograms (e.g. "/usr/bin/python main.py --max") for different functions (getting a channel listing for a zip code, populating the channel guide, etc.).

So anyway, that's why these TV Tracker Python processes are so CPU intensive: they're using interpreted code instead of compiled code. And when one of the system processeses gets "detached" from the widget's client dashboard process (which apparently can happen), it can sit around and chew up a lot of time.

Chuckit · May 23, 2005, 06:42 PM

But isn't Python code compiled when it's interpreted? The fact that it's interpreted should only matter when it's being loaded.

Millennium · May 24, 2005, 04:45 AM

Originally Posted by macintologist

How do you know all this?

I'm a bit of a Python freak, I'll admit. I started out learning it for work, but it's become my favorite language. One of these days I'll work up the guts to actually code something worthy of unleashing on an unsuspecting public... um, I mean releasing. Yeah, that's it.

As for Chuckit's question, uncompiled Python source files (.py) are usually compiled the first time they're run (.pyc), and the .pyc files are then executed. Because of that, this shouldn't be an issue after the first time the widget fetches HTML.

I admit, I'm a little curious about the widget's design. I know that widgets can include Cocoa "custom code plug-ins", and the API doesn't look like anything that PyObjC wouldn't be able to handle. Why not roll the Python code into a plug-in and parse the HTML that way? This should eliminate the detachment issues, and it may even run a bit faster. The downside is that it would use a bit more RAM, since the plug-in would be constantly loaded rather than called occasionally, but I don't think this would be that much of a problem.

aristotles · May 29, 2005, 01:48 AM

I was bitten by this bug. The 1.5 version of the TV tracker fixes this bug.