MacOS panic: "tried to handle event while another event is currently being handled"

[madsmtm]

Discussed in #3990 by @AlexanderHarrison

^{Originally posted by AlexanderHarrison November 9, 2024}
Hi! I'm running into the aforementioned error on startup on macos. Linux and windows both work fine. I couldn't find any information about this error, or find anyone who has run into it before.

Unfortunately, I am relying on the help of a volunteer to compile on macos, so I am very limited in the amount of debugging I can do myself.

From looking at the winit source, it looks like each event call borrows a RefCell of the EventHandlerData, and somehow we are not dropping the RefMut before handing another event. The comment states that the panic "avoids re-entrancy". I assume that one of my handled events is somehow causing the event loop to handle another event, before dropping RefMut. Would this be caused by a method call into the event loop? Or a some method on the window? Not sure, I would love a pointer as to how this panic could come about.

Here's the (abridged) structure of my app. I don't think I'm doing anything crazy.

enum WinitRunner<'a> {
    // avoid lifetime issues
    None,

    Uninit {
        window: &'a mut Option<Window>,
    },
    Init {
        st: State,
        ctx: Ctx<'a>,
    },
}

impl<'a> ApplicationHandler<Update> for WinitRunner<'a> {
    fn resumed(&mut self, event_loop: &ActiveEventLoop) {
        if matches!(self, WinitRunner::Init { .. }) { return }

        env_logger::init();

        // avoid lifetime issues
        let s = std::mem::replace(self, WinitRunner::None);

        let window = match s {
            WinitRunner::Uninit { window } => window,
            _ => unreachable!(),
        };

        let window: &Window = window.insert(event_loop.create_window(
            Window::default_attributes()
                .with_min_inner_size(winit::dpi::PhysicalSize::new(MIN_WIDTH, MIN_HEIGHT))
                .with_title("title!")
        ).unwrap());

        let mut ctx = Ctx::new(window);
        let st = State::new(&mut ctx);

        *self = WinitRunner::Init { st, ctx }
    }
    
    fn window_event(&mut self, event_loop: &ActiveEventLoop, window_id: WindowId, event: WindowEvent) {
        let (st, ctx) = match self {
            WinitRunner::Init { st, ctx } => (st, ctx),
            _ => return,
        };

        st.window_event(ctx, event_loop, window_id, event);
    }

    fn user_event(&mut self, event_loop: &ActiveEventLoop, _event: Update) {
        let (st, ctx) = match self {
            WinitRunner::Init { st, ctx } => (st, ctx),
            _ => return,
        };

        st.user_event(ctx, event_loop);
    }
}

fn main() {
    let event_loop = EventLoop::with_user_event().build().unwrap();
    let event_sender = event_loop.create_proxy();
    std::thread::spawn(move || {
        loop {
            let _ = event_sender.send_event(Update);
            std::thread::sleep(UPDATE_PERIOD);
        }
    });

    let mut window = None;
    let mut runner: WinitRunner = WinitRunner::Uninit { window: &mut window };
    event_loop.run_app(&mut runner).unwrap();
}

[madsmtm]

@AlexanderHarrison: Since I cannot run your sample code (it is not a minimum reproducible one), it's a bit hard to test.

What Winit version are you using? (I'm assuming v0.30.5?) And could you try it on the latest master? And could you post the backtrace (set RUST_BACKTRACE=1)?

EDIT: Wait nevermind, you said you're limited in the amount of debugging... Hmm...

[madsmtm]

Are you are doing anything to the window inside Ctx::new or State::new?

[AlexanderHarrison]

Yes, inside Ctx::new I'm initiating a wgpu context and creating a surface using window, then setting the window icon, and finally configuring the surface with the result of window.inner_size().

I'm using winit v0.30.5 with wgpu v22.1.0.

I will try to put together a minimal example.