Why script doesn't quit if win32ui is imported

Question

I have a very strange unexpected problem with Python 2.7.2 under Windows 7..

This code doesn't quit:

import gtk
import win32ui
w = gtk.Window()
w.connect("destroy", gtk.main_quit)
w.show_all()
gtk.main()
print 'stop-point'
quit()

The window closes, I get 'stop point', and all should be ok. But console doesn't close. Even quit() doesn't help.

The problem is in import win32ui If I remove it, everything works fine.

Also, in version with just

import gtk
import win32ui

everything works.

What is the problem with win32ui? How do I force my app to close?

It happens even without GTK:

import win32gui, win32ui

try:
    result = win32gui.GetOpenFileNameW()
except win32gui.error as result:
    pass
print result

# script ends but python doesn't exit

Answer 1

The problem is caused by a bug in pywin32: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3562998&group_id=78018&atid=551954

I came up with a horrible hack that serves as a workaround until the bug in pywin32 is fixed. Put this code at the end of your exit routine. Clean up as much as you can before you execute this. The workaround uses the Windows taskkill tool to terminate the current task.

import os

# kill this process with taskkill
current_pid = os.getpid()
os.system("taskkill /pid %s /f" % current_pid)

Registering the above code as a function with atexit might allow Python to do some cleanup first:

import atexit, os

def taskkill_this():
    # kill this process
    current_pid = os.getpid()
    os.system("taskkill /pid %s /f" % current_pid)

atexit.register(taskkill_this)