gh-132657: Make deepcopy and copy scale with free-threading by eendebakpt · Pull Request #138429 · python/cpython · GitHub

We improve scaling by:

Using a frozenset instead of a set for atomic type lookup (this avoids locks)
Removing the redundant _nil sentinel. The _nil is not immortal, so results in some refcount contention.

On the benchmark from #132658 this results in:

Main:

shallow_copy               5.8x slower
deepcopy                   2.1x slower

PR:

shallow_copy               1.1x faster
deepcopy                   2.5x faster

Remaining work to be done (followup PRs):

The module level objects like copy.deepcopy, _atomic_types and _deepcopy_dispatch do not have deferred referenence counting or immortality, so there is some refcount contention left.
The _deepcopy_dispatch is a dict. Once there is a frozendict in cpython, we should use that instead.

Issue: copy.copy and copy.deepcopy scale poorly with free-threading #132657

LGTM.

cc @serhiy-storchaka

I'm surprised, but replacing _nil with None works well. It seems like memo values are never None.

Correct, the only values set are integers (id of objects)

This will break the user code that patches these sets, but this is not a big deal. There is a slower alternative -- modify copyreg.dispatch_table by using the public API copyreg.pickle(). LGTM. 👍

As for _deepcopy_dispatch() -- I am planning to add a public API for modifying it, so it cannot be frozen.

And note that this performance gain is not for long. We will need to get rid of None in favor of other sentinel object. See #109498.

Co-authored-by: Victor Stinner <vstinner@python.org>

⚠️⚠️⚠️ Buildbot failure ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Hi! The buildbot s390x Fedora Stable Refleaks 3.x (tier-3) has failed when building commit e46d403.

What do you need to do:

Don't panic.
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Failed tests:

test_external_inspection

Failed subtests:

test_only_active_thread - test.test_external_inspection.TestGetStackTrace.test_only_active_thread

Summary of the results of the build (if available):

==

Click to see traceback logs

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/buildbot/buildarea/3.x.cstratak-fedora-stable-s390x.refleak/build/Lib/test/test_external_inspection.py", line 1246, in test_only_active_thread
    self.assertEqual(
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^
        len(gil_traces), 1, "Should have exactly one GIL holder"
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    )
    ^
AssertionError: 0 != 1 : Should have exactly one GIL holder

⚠️⚠️⚠️ Buildbot failure ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Hi! The buildbot AMD64 CentOS9 NoGIL Refleaks 3.x (tier-1) has failed when building commit e46d403.

What do you need to do:

Don't panic.
Check the buildbot page in the devguide if you don't know what the buildbots are or how they work.
Go to the page of the buildbot that failed (https://buildbot.python.org/#/builders/1610/builds/2013) and take a look at the build logs.
Check if the failure is related to this commit (e46d403) or if it is a false positive.
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You can take a look at the buildbot page here:

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Failed tests:

test_free_threading

Summary of the results of the build (if available):

==

Click to see traceback logs

remote: Enumerating objects: 9, done.        
remote: Counting objects:  12% (1/8)        
remote: Counting objects:  25% (2/8)        
remote: Counting objects:  37% (3/8)        
remote: Counting objects:  50% (4/8)        
remote: Counting objects:  62% (5/8)        
remote: Counting objects:  75% (6/8)        
remote: Counting objects:  87% (7/8)        
remote: Counting objects: 100% (8/8)        
remote: Counting objects: 100% (8/8), done.        
remote: Compressing objects:  12% (1/8)        
remote: Compressing objects:  25% (2/8)        
remote: Compressing objects:  37% (3/8)        
remote: Compressing objects:  50% (4/8)        
remote: Compressing objects:  62% (5/8)        
remote: Compressing objects:  75% (6/8)        
remote: Compressing objects:  87% (7/8)        
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (8/8)        
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (8/8), done.        
remote: Total 9 (delta 0), reused 3 (delta 0), pack-reused 1 (from 1)        
From https://github.com/python/cpython
 * branch                    main       -> FETCH_HEAD
Note: switching to 'e46d403d59ab28b49d2056b55cc871600816a2bb'.

You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental
changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this
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Turn off this advice by setting config variable advice.detachedHead to false

HEAD is now at e46d403d59a gh-132657: improve `deepcopy` and `copy` scaling on free-threading (#138429)
Switched to and reset branch 'main'

configure: WARNING: no system libmpdec found; falling back to pure-Python version for the decimal module

make: *** [Makefile:2486: buildbottest] Error 2

…ing (python#138429)

Make deepcopy and copy scale with free-threading

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copy.copy and copy.deepcopy scale poorly with free-threading #132657

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📜🤖 Added by blurb_it.

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eendebakpt added stdlib Standard Library Python modules in the Lib/ directory topic-free-threading performance Performance or resource usage labels Sep 3, 2025

vstinner approved these changes Sep 3, 2025

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bedevere-app Bot added awaiting merge and removed awaiting review labels Sep 3, 2025

serhiy-storchaka approved these changes Sep 3, 2025

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eendebakpt and others added 2 commits September 4, 2025 09:14

Update Lib/copy.py

4c7c42b

Co-authored-by: Victor Stinner <vstinner@python.org>

Merge branch 'main' into copy_deepcopy_ft

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kumaraditya303 approved these changes Sep 4, 2025

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kumaraditya303 merged commit e46d403 into python:main Sep 4, 2025
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lkollar pushed a commit to lkollar/cpython that referenced this pull request Sep 9, 2025

pythongh-132657 : improve deepcopy and copy scaling on free-thread…

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…ing (python#138429)

eendebakpt mentioned this pull request Sep 16, 2025

Replace module level mutable containers with immutable containers #139003

Open

This was referenced Jul 24, 2026

copy.deepcopy memo lookup fails when __deepcopy__ returns None #154594

Open

gh-154594: Fix deepcopy memo lookup when __deepcopy__ returns None #154595

Open

sreehariannam mentioned this pull request Jul 28, 2026

gh-154594: Fix copy.deepcopy() re-copying objects whose __deepcopy__ returns None #154819

Closed

                   if memo is None:
                       memo = {}
                   else:
-                      y = memo.get(d, _nil)

gh-132657: Make deepcopy and copy scale with free-threading by eendebakpt · Pull Request #138429 · python/cpython · GitHub

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gh-132657: Make deepcopy and copy scale with free-threading by eendebakpt · Pull Request #138429 · python/cpython · GitHub

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