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Killing the subprocess after using the visualizer #87

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@nikhilpodila

I notice two issues with using meshcat to run my visualizations for simulations developed on pinocchio:

  1. I cannot effectively kill a meshcat visualizer completely, and thus, its server. Vizualizer().delete() just deletes the path and Visualizer().close() fails since ViewerWindow().close() has not been implemented. This would not be a problem if issue 2 below is addressed.

  2. I use Meshcat visualizer by calling Visualizer(zmq_url=None, window=None). When I do so, the ViewerWindow() internally creates a zmq_url, zmq_socket and a subprocess. Once I am done using the visualizer, I would like to delete it, end the program, start a new program and create a new visualizer. But by doing this, I am assigned a new URL and subprocess every time, resulting in a pile up in my system's processes. I see that this is because the subprocess is not killed when I end the program or delete the visualizer. It would be ideal if killing the subprocess and closing the socket could be handled by Meshcat or by calling a Meshcat method such as Visualizer().close()

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  1. kingjin94 commented on Feb 27, 2023

    @kingjin94

    Second that. Thanks to viewer.to_static_html() one can quite comfortably save debug visualizations in bigger optimization runs but as there is no way to free the meshcat visualizer one can also create hughe memory leaks...

  2. kingjin94 commented on Jun 30, 2023

    @kingjin94

    IMHO I think that the atexit callback in https://github.com/rdeits/meshcat-python/blob/763ac31c869156921fd9560b2bce3761dbbc2cfa/src/meshcat/servers/zmqserver.py#L74 is not the python way to go. Rather would expect resources to be cleaned with gc, i.e. the cleanup routine should be called in __del__ (or an explicit close function called by Visualizer.close() (or ViewerWindow.close()

  3. kingjin94 commented on Jun 30, 2023

    @kingjin94

    Also zmq does not seem to be handled gracefully according to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26224179/zmq-socket-gracefully-termination-in-python

    Suggestion seems to be to use finally clause to run context.destroy() / term() at the end of main

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