[IPython-User] Starting ipython kernel outside main thread

[Loïc Estève]

Hi,

sorry if this message reaches the mailing twice, I subscribed to ipython-
user after sending this and am not 100% sure this will hit the mailing list 
eventually. Anyway here was the original message:

I recently I have been experimenting with embedding an ipython kernel inside 
a C++ program for inspecting/debugging purposes.

For reasons that probably don't matter, embedding the kernel doesn't 
happen in the main thread and you tend to hit "ValueError: signal only works 
in main thread" exceptions from multiple places in the code.

My very naive understanding is that the signal registering is done so 
that Control-C will shut down the kernel cleanly. In my particular example 
I don't have any interactive terminal attached to the kernel so that there 
is no way for me to hit Control-C.

I just went for the simplest solution I could see which was monkey-
patching signal.signal and wrapping it inside a try except. A simplified 
gist illustrating the issue I had and a possible work-around is available 
at https://gist.github.com/lesteve/5052267.

Am I going to be bitten me pretty hard later down the line if I go down 
this signal monkey-patching route? Is there a better way to support 
embedding kernel outside the main thread? 

Finally could this work-around be used to embed multiple kernels in 
different threads (I guess you would need to customise the default kernel-
<pid>.json naming to get a different connection file for each thread)?

Cheers,
Loïc