Error retrieving tasks: AsyncioDebug section not available, in cpython-3.14.0rc1-macos-aarch64-none tag/20250723

[aleksandr-vin]

Hello,

I'm following the example from https://docs.python.org/3.14/whatsnew/3.14.html#asyncio-introspection-capabilities and it fails with

Error retrieving tasks: AsyncioDebug section not available

Please check this workflow run on matrix of macos, ubuntu, windows: https://github.com/aleksandr-vin/Python_asynico_introspection_test_MacOS/actions/runs/16673137842/job/47193715249 -- you will see that python -m asyncio pstree is producing this error on macos with python 3.14.0rc1 installed via uv and works fine on other platforms or when python is installed via actions/setup-python.

[geofft]

I see what's wrong - the upstream asyncio debugging code in 3.14 hard-codes the assumption that _asyncio is linked as a separate module, and we statically link it. Fortunately 3.15 has a change to statically link _asyncio, so I can just cherry-pick that (but it's a tiny change either way).

Also, FWIW, this is broken on Linux too but your test case seems to run the wrong version of Python under sudo python - I'm guessing that sudo on the Linux host is configured to reset PATH, and so you get the old version of -m asyncio which doesn't support tools, and the one on the macOS host is not and so you get the right binary.

ubuntu@ip-172-16-0-59:~$ uvx python3.14
Python 3.14.0rc2 (main, Sep  2 2025, 14:20:56) [Clang 20.1.4 ] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> os.getpid()
359300
>>> 
[1]+  Stopped                 uvx python3.14
ubuntu@ip-172-16-0-59:~$ bg
[1]+ uvx python3.14 &
ubuntu@ip-172-16-0-59:~$ uvx python3.14 -m asyncio ps 359300
Error retrieving tasks: AsyncioDebug section not available

[geofft]

By the way, you shouldn't need sudo for either macOS or Linux. On macOS you can give your binary the com.apple.security.get-task-allow entitlement, which allows it to be debugged by other processes, e.g., make a file called get-task-allow.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.security.get-task-allow</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

and do a codesign --sign - --entitlements get-task-allow.plist "$(uv python find 3.14)". (An "ad-hoc signature," i.e. a code signature blob with no actual signature, is permitted for this entitlement, so you don't need to be a member of the developer program or anything to run this command.)

On Linux you can either disable ptrace restrictions systemwide with echo 0 | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope, or if you have a very recent version of util-linux (2.41, released in June) you can use setpriv --ptracer any uvx python3.14 to allow debugging for this one process (which I added recently), or, absent prctl support in CPython itself, you can do import ctypes; ctypes.CDLL("").prctl(0x59616d61, -1) (i.e. prctl(PR_SET_PTRACER, PR_SET_PTRACER_ANY).

[geofft]

We'll be doing a release today/tomorrow for 3.14.0rc3 and this change will make it into our build. Thanks again for reporting!

Also I opened python/cpython#139139 covering most of my previous comment about sudo (minus the wacky ctypes bit) and am definitely open to feedback on whether it's clear/helpful.