Confused about spinOnce and sleep

asked 2021-03-31 08:45:36 -0600

pitosalas
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updated 2021-04-02 02:50:42 -0600

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I want to go a little deeper into the "why" from a technical perspective. Not just you must do this, but why. I've looked at the rospy source code but I am still not sure about the following. Given this very common pattern:

    rate = rospy.Rate(10)
    while not rospy.is_shutdown():
       # do stuff
        rate.sleep()

Why is a rospy.spinOnce() not required? Or is it required? Because when I read the source of rate.sleep() didn't see that sleep include the spinOnce functionality which would imply that callbacks wouldn't be happening as a result of .sleep() or of is_shutdown(). But in fact callbacks do seem to be happening, so I must be misunderstanding a detail.

Refined restatement

Let me restate this in a very focused way. In python when must spin() used and when is spinOnce() used?

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1

The initial two commenters contradict each other which shows that this is a tricky thing to really understand!

not really.

The answer is incorrect. @Delb's comment is correct.

This has also been discussed before here on ROS Answers.

roscpp and rospy just have different threading models.

gvdhoorn ( 2021-03-31 11:00:52 -0600 )edit

@gvdhoorn Thank you for your comment.

I would like to revise my answer. Could you please let me know the deficiencies?

I would like to describe my perception. I was answering about "Why is a rospy.spinOnce() not required? Or is it required?" I understand that @Delb has supplemented about spin() in python.

miura ( 2021-03-31 11:14:19 -0600 )edit

2

The question is specifically about rospy.

You link to roscpp tutorials and state the same "should apply to Python". But that's not correct.

roscpp and rospy handle these things differently.

@Delb already made that clear.

gvdhoorn ( 2021-03-31 11:16:57 -0600 )edit

Thank you. I'm going to leave the answers and comments as they are now. I thought about deleting the wrong comment, but I think it would make @Delb's comment a bit confusing. If there is a good way to fix it, please let me know.

miura ( 2021-03-31 11:21:01 -0600 )edit

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3

answered 2021-04-02 02:45:13 -0600

Delb

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updated 2021-04-02 07:28:27 -0600

gvdhoorn
86574 ●283 ●1432 ●1054 http://cor.tudelft.nl/

To clearly answer your question and remove any doubt :

Why is a rospy.spinOnce() not required ?

Because it doesn't exist, I'm not sure why you would ask that given that there isn't any documentation about a function spinOnce in rospy. The first answer on this question provides interesting links.

But in fact callbacks do seem to be happening

That's the normal behavior with rospy. roscpp and rospy are not the same. When it comes to callbacks, with roscpp you need to use spin() or spinOnce() to process the events. Withrospy you don't need it because when you create a subscriber it gets its own thread.

In python when must spin() used ?

If you want to keep your node alive until you request a shutdown or ros crashes. You can use it even if you don't have any subscriber.

and when is spinOnce() used?

Never, it doesn't exist.

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-1

answered 2021-03-31 09:33:10 -0600

miura

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updated 2021-03-31 09:33:24 -0600

The spinOnce is necessary for the callback function to work. Therefore, if a node only publishes, it can work without spinOnce.

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It mentions what I answered, try searching spinOnce. http://wiki.ros.org/roscpp_tutorials/... This is a description of c++, but it should be the same for python.

miura ( 2021-03-31 09:36:22 -0600 )edit

2

No rospy and roscpp are different especially for the callbacks. From the same tutorial but for rospy :

Unlike roscpp, rospy.spin() does not affect the subscriber callback functions, as those have their own threads.

Delb ( 2021-03-31 10:26:44 -0600 )edit

Despite the comments and responses it is still not crystal unclear. The tutorial uses raspy.spin(). I assume that's when you have nothing else to do and you just want to keep the node from exiting. And from the above comments it sounds like in python you never need spinOnce. I've added a new very specific pointed question above that restates what I was asking maybe in a more focused way.

pitosalas ( 2021-04-01 14:12:20 -0600 )edit

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Confused about spinOnce and sleep

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