Why does PyQt sometimes crash on exit?

Question

The given code below displays a QMainWindow with 4 QGraphicsView to draw with the mouse in it. It works as intended, but when closing it the following error message appears in the console:

Process finished with exit code 139 (interrupted by signal 11: SIGSEGV)

What's wrong in the code?

---

main.py

import sys

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QMainWindow, QGraphicsView, QGraphicsScene, QGraphicsPathItem
from PyQt5.QtGui import QPainterPath, QPen
from PyQt5.QtCore import Qt
from PyQt5.uic import loadUi

# Based on code from https://stackoverflow.com/a/44248794/7481773

class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        loadUi("mainwindow.ui", self)

        self.verticalLayout_top_left.addWidget(GraphicsView())
        self.verticalLayout_top_right.addWidget(GraphicsView())
        self.verticalLayout_bottom_left.addWidget(GraphicsView())
        self.verticalLayout_bottom_right.addWidget(GraphicsView())


class GraphicsView(QGraphicsView):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.start = None
        self.end = None

        self.setScene(QGraphicsScene())
        self.path = QPainterPath()
        self.item = GraphicsPathItem()
        self.scene().addItem(self.item)

        self.contents_rect = self.contentsRect()
        self.setSceneRect(0, 0, self.contents_rect.width(), self.contents_rect.height())
        self.setHorizontalScrollBarPolicy(Qt.ScrollBarAlwaysOff)
        self.setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(Qt.ScrollBarAlwaysOff)

    def mousePressEvent(self, event):
        self.start = self.mapToScene(event.pos())
        self.path.moveTo(self.start)

    def mouseMoveEvent(self, event):
        self.end = self.mapToScene(event.pos())
        self.path.lineTo(self.end)
        self.start = self.end
        self.item.setPath(self.path)


class GraphicsPathItem(QGraphicsPathItem):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        pen = QPen()
        pen.setColor(Qt.black)
        pen.setWidth(5)
        self.setPen(pen)


def main():
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    main_window = MainWindow()
    main_window.show()
    app.exec_()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

---

mainwindow.ui

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ui version="4.0">
 <class>MainWindow</class>
 <widget class="QMainWindow" name="MainWindow">
  <property name="geometry">
   <rect>
    <x>0</x>
    <y>0</y>
    <width>800</width>
    <height>600</height>
   </rect>
  </property>
  <property name="windowTitle">
   <string>MainWindow</string>
  </property>
  <widget class="QWidget" name="centralwidget">
   <layout class="QGridLayout" name="gridLayout">
    <item row="1" column="0">
     <widget class="QPushButton" name="pushButton_left">
      <property name="text">
       <string>PushButton</string>
      </property>
     </widget>
    </item>
    <item row="0" column="0">
     <layout class="QVBoxLayout" name="verticalLayout_top_left"/>
    </item>
    <item row="0" column="1">
     <layout class="QVBoxLayout" name="verticalLayout_top_right"/>
    </item>
    <item row="1" column="1">
     <widget class="QPushButton" name="pushButton_right">
      <property name="text">
       <string>PushButton</string>
      </property>
     </widget>
    </item>
    <item row="2" column="0">
     <layout class="QVBoxLayout" name="verticalLayout_bottom_left"/>
    </item>
    <item row="2" column="1">
     <layout class="QVBoxLayout" name="verticalLayout_bottom_right"/>
    </item>
   </layout>
  </widget>
  <widget class="QMenuBar" name="menubar">
   <property name="geometry">
    <rect>
     <x>0</x>
     <y>0</y>
     <width>800</width>
     <height>24</height>
    </rect>
   </property>
  </widget>
  <widget class="QStatusBar" name="statusbar"/>
 </widget>
 <resources/>
 <connections/>
</ui>

Answer 1

This is caused by a long-standing issue that is due to be fixed in an upcoming release (probably PyQt-5.14). If you're using PyQt-5.13.1, you can test the fix by using the following temporary API:

from PyQt5.QtCore import pyqt5_enable_new_onexit_scheme

pyqt5_enable_new_onexit_scheme(True)

If there are no reported problems from this, it will eventually become the default behaviour (so there will be no need to enable it explicitly). The underlying problem that causes the issue is documented here:

• PyQt5 Docs: Crashes On Exit.

Essentially, Python's garbage-collection scheme deletes objects in an unpredictable order, and this can sometimes result in Qt trying to delete objects that no longer exist (resulting in a crash). So the example in the question could also be fixed like this:

def main():
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    main_window = MainWindow()
    main_window.show()
    app.exec_()
    # ensure correct deletion order
    del main_window, app

The upcoming changes noted above will mean that this kind of clean-up code will no longer be necessary.

Answer 2

The problem is caused because even when you finish running app.exec_() the application still releases resources that need access to the instance of QApplication but as in your case "app" is removed before doing so by making the internal functions of Qt Access unreserved memory.

Considering the above, a possible solution is to extend the scope of "app" so that it is not removed after executing main function by making a global variable.

# ...
app = None


def main():
    global app
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    # ...