WIP: Fix #790: preview server - Uses Thread instead of Process for Linux

[Nitorac]

Workaround to fix Preview of rst files not working #790.

To limit any retrocompatibility issues, a Thread is used (instead of the current Process) only if we are on Linux.

[Nitorac]

(sorry for the force push, the commit had not the correct author)

[Nitorac]

Tested successfully on Ubuntu 24.04 with Python 3.12.3 (for the Thread part) and on Windows 11 with Python 3.12.6 (for the old Process part)

I'm open to any feedback

[alcarney]

Awesome, thanks for this!

I've only taken a quick glance, but it looks good to me so far. I'll try and have a proper look over the next week or so :)

[alcarney]

Ok, I've resurrected the ci pipelines for the 0.x branch and have (hopefully! 🤞) reconfigured things so that pushing a release from there works also.

However, having re-read #790 I noticed that the issue was originally reported on MacOS - could you tweak this PR so that a Thread is used for all platforms? (Apologies for not noticing sooner! 😅)

While you're at it could you also add a changelog entry in a file lib/esbonio/changes/790.fix.rst (See here for an example). Feel free to append by @Nitorac to your message so that you get the credit for the contribution on the GitHub release page :)

[Nitorac]

Ok, I've resurrected the ci pipelines for the 0.x branch and have (hopefully! 🤞) reconfigured things so that pushing a release from there works also.

Good news !

However, having re-read #790 I noticed that the issue was originally reported on MacOS - could you tweak this PR so that a Thread is used for all platforms? (Apologies for not noticing sooner! 😅)

Oh yeah you're right, I didn't pay attention to that, it's hard to understand what environments are affected !
So I agree with you, I will edit the PR to remove the Process part entirely.

While you're at it could you also add a changelog entry in a file lib/esbonio/changes/790.fix.rst (See here for an example). Feel free to append by @Nitorac to your message so that you get the credit for the contribution on the GitHub release page :)

I will add it. Thanks for your explanations !

[Nitorac]

@alcarney The main part is done, but I have a question :
I couldn't understand why on non-Linux systems, a Queue was used to fetch the preview server port after creating it. (

esbonio/lib/esbonio/esbonio/lsp/sphinx/__init__.py

Line 443 in 0ecf59f

q: Queue = Queue()

)

Since I use a Thread now, I have just removed it, but I don't want to make any mistakes here !

Btw, as before, I tested and it worked on Ubuntu 24.04 with Python 3.12.3 and on Windows 11 with Python 3.12.6.

[alcarney]

I couldn't understand why on non-Linux systems, a Queue was used to fetch the preview server port after creating it

I don't remember the exact details, but in order to share objects with a multiprocessing.Process they must be pickle-able. For some reason the server object was only pickle-able on Linux, so the Queue was used on other platforms as a work around.

Now that we're using a Thread that's no longer necessary :)

[alcarney]

Thanks again for working on this - looks good to me! :)