Processing.py on Mac consuming battery and hanging computers

edited July 2017 in Python Mode

I'm teaching a course using Processing.py and two of my students are having chronic problems with Processing. It seems to consume a lot of CPU and drains their battery quickly. Performance also degrades, with longer and longer times needed to start up sketches until they restart their machines.

When we look in Activity Monitor there are various processes called "Processing" in there, even when no sketches are running. Is it possible that Processing is spawning processes that aren't getting killed when the sketches are closed?

One student is on Sierra, the other on Yosemite.

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Answers

  • This sounds familiar. Could possibly be related to:

    https://github.com/jdf/processing.py/issues/233

    But if not, perhaps have a student open a detailed issue on github?

    https://github.com/jdf/processing.py/issues

  • I don't think it's related; my students aren't using shapes yet, just the basic polygons and lines. Unless the problem described can be replicated even more simply.

  • I believe that Processing.py does spawn a Jython runner that it leaves running across multiple plays of a sketch, and only closes when the sketch is completely closed. This is to avoid very long Jython startup times on each run.

    So that runner could be failing to close for some reason when a sketch closes -- or a sketch could be creating a new runner every they hit play, which it isn't supposed to do. Your students could watch the process list while open a new sketch, hitting run a few times, then closing it and see what is happening.

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