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context variables can leak out of asyncio.Task #140947

@pmeier

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@pmeier

Bug report

Bug description:

This is a minimal reproducer for Kludex/uvicorn#2167. TL;DR when using asyncio as event loop, users of uvicorn were seeing polluted contexts after sending in large payloads. For those uvicorn paused reading on the main thread and resumed it in a task.

import asyncio import contextvars import sys cvar1 = contextvars.ContextVar("cvar1") cvar2 = contextvars.ContextVar("cvar2") cvar3 = contextvars.ContextVar("cvar3") def print_diagnostics(label): task = t.get_name() if (t := asyncio.current_task()) else None context = {c.name: v for c, v in contextvars.copy_context().items()} print(f"{label}: {task=}, {context=}\n{'-' * 80}") class DemoProtocol(asyncio.Protocol): def __init__(self, on_conn_lost): self.transport = None self.on_conn_lost = on_conn_lost self.tasks = set() def connection_made(self, transport): print_diagnostics("connection_made") self.transport = transport def data_received(self, data): print_diagnostics("data_received") task = asyncio.create_task(self.asgi()) self.tasks.add(task) task.add_done_callback(self.tasks.discard) self.transport.pause_reading() def connection_lost(self, exc): print_diagnostics("connection_lost") if not self.on_conn_lost.done(): self.on_conn_lost.set_result(True) async def asgi(self): print_diagnostics("asgi start") cvar1.set(True) # make sure that we only resume after the pause # otherwise the resume does nothing while not self.transport._paused: await asyncio.sleep(0.1) cvar2.set(True) self.transport.resume_reading() cvar3.set(True) print_diagnostics("asgi end") async def main(): print(f"Python: {sys.version}\n{'-' * 80}") loop = asyncio.get_running_loop() on_conn_lost = loop.create_future() host, port = "127.0.0.1", 8888 async with await loop.create_server(lambda: DemoProtocol(on_conn_lost), host, port): reader, writer = await asyncio.open_connection(host, port) writer.write(b"anything") await writer.drain() writer.close() await writer.wait_closed() await on_conn_lost if __name__ == "__main__": asyncio.run(main())
Python: 3.14.0 (main, Oct 14 2025, 21:27:55) [Clang 20.1.4 ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- connection_made: task=None, context={} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- data_received: task=None, context={} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- asgi start: task='Task-4', context={} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- asgi end: task='Task-4', context={'cvar2': True, 'cvar3': True, 'cvar1': True} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- connection_lost: task=None, context={'cvar2': True, 'cvar1': True} -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The asgi task sets three context variables:

  1. cvar1 is set at the beginning of the function, which may or may not be before the reading is paused.
  2. cvar2 is set after the reading is paused.
  3. cvar3 is set after the reading is resumed.

The context variables that have been set in the task before the reading is resumed (cvar1 and cvar2) leak out of the task into the main thread.

CPython versions tested on:

3.14

Operating systems tested on:

Linux

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3.13bugs and security fixes3.14bugs and security fixes3.15new features, bugs and security fixestopic-asynciotype-bugAn unexpected behavior, bug, or error

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