[maartenbreddels]

Fixes #788.

On a free-threaded build, call_soon_threadsafe() can run while another thread closes the loop.
The poster can pass the _closed check, and then _close() sets handler_async to None.
The poster then calls send() on None and the process segfaults.
The same race also makes close() fail with deque mutated during iteration or new callbacks were queued during loop closing.
With the GIL, the method runs as one step, so this did not happen.
This is a different race than #720.

The fix

The loop gets a cython.pymutex (_close_lock).
call_soon_threadsafe() holds it while it reads _closed, appends to _ready, and calls handler_async.send().
_close() holds it only while it checks and sets _closed.
After that, no poster touches _ready or handler_async again, so the rest of _close() runs without the lock.

The lock is not reentrant, so no code that can allocate Python objects runs under it.
An allocation can start a GC, and a finalizer can call call_soon_threadsafe() on the same loop.
For that reason the poster raises RuntimeError('Event loop is closed') only after it releases the lock.
For the same reason, _close() cancels the handles in _ready after it releases the lock.

I first tried with cython.critical_section(self).
It fixed the segfault, but close() still failed 1 to 3 times in 20 seconds.
The reason: the deque append can block on the deque's own lock, and a blocked thread suspends its critical sections.
The closing thread can then run while the poster is between the check and the append.
A PyMutex stays held while the thread blocks, so it does not have this gap.

call_soon_threadsafe() is the only way other threads post callbacks to the loop.
Other threads may also call is_closed(), which only reads a flag.
Signal handling runs on the loop thread.
The async generator finalizer hook can run on any thread, but it also posts through call_soon_threadsafe().
shutdown_default_executor() and set_debug() post through call_soon_threadsafe(), so they get the fix too.

Tests

New test: test_call_soon_threadsafe_while_closing (UV and AIO).
Two threads create, run, and close loops while four threads post to them, for 1 second.
The only error a poster may get is RuntimeError('Event loop is closed'); any other error fails the test.
The threads are daemon threads and the join has a timeout, so a deadlock fails the test instead of hanging the suite.
On master it fails 3 of 3 runs on 3.14t (close() errors).
With the fix it passes.

I ran these tests on 3.14t, 3.14, and 3.9, all pass:
test_call_soon_threadsafe_while_closing, test_call_soon_threadsafe_safety, test_freethreading, test_close, for TestBaseUV and TestBaseAIO.
test_freethreading skips on the GIL builds, as expected.

The standalone repro from the issue, on 3.14t: three 20-second runs and one 60-second run, 0 crashes and 0 close() failures.
The 60-second run made 118 million posts.
Before the fix it crashes in under a second.

A GC re-entry check (a __del__ on a cycle that posts to a closed loop, with a low GC threshold) does not deadlock on 3.9, 3.14, and 3.14t.

Cost, on an M-series Mac:

• One thread: about 141 to 145 ns per call_soon_threadsafe(), with and without the fix, on 3.14 and 3.14t.
• 16 threads posting to one running loop on 3.14t: 11.8 to 12.9 million posts in 10 seconds, with and without the fix.

Disclosure: the analysis, the fix, and the tests were written with Claude Code, and reviewed by three AI reviewers. The crash comes from our own production-like load tests.

[Vizonex]

This makes sense to me as to why this would be in place. I'll have to think about implementing this on winloop's end if needed. There seems to be a workflow broken but it's not the library's fault so I approve of this PR.

[maartenbreddels]

Thanks for the review!

The red job is test (3.9, ubuntu-latest). GitHub moved ubuntu-latest to Ubuntu 26.04, which has no Python 3.9 in setup-python. I opened #790 to run that job on ubuntu-24.04.

We also tested the fix on Linux, in our app's 3.14t image:

• The repro from Segfault in call_soon_threadsafe() when another thread closes the loop (free-threaded Python) #788, 60 s per run: stock 0.23.0 crashed in 296 of 296 runs, the patched build in 0 of 3.
• Our app under load: page load time and throughput are the same with and without the fix, on 3.14t and on 3.14.

[Vizonex]

@maartenbreddels In the meantime I've added this bugfix on winloop's side Vizonex/Winloop#189