Opening a folder with many files causes spyder to freeze

[MaartenBransen]

Description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

When opening a folder with many (think 1000 and upwards) files in the 'files' pane causes Spyder to completely freeze until loading is completed. While it appears that it does eventually come back to life after loading is completed, many times Windows will tell you the program is frozen and ask whether you want to wait or force quit during the process. For folders with larger amounts of files the waiting time is longer.

Versions

• Spyder version: 4.0.0b4
• Python version: 3.7.1
• Qt version: 5.9.6
• PyQt5 version: 5.9.2
• Operating System: Windows 10

Dependencies

pygments >=2.0    :  2.4.2 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=2.6.4:  2.7 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6    :  2.1.2 (OK)
pyls >=0.27.0     :  0.28.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0   :  5.5.0 (OK)
pandas >=0.13.1   :  0.24.2 (OK)
numpy >=1.7       :  1.16.4 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3     :  None (NOK)
cython >=0.21     :  None (NOK)
qtconsole >=4.5.2 :  4.5.3 (OK)
IPython >=4.0     :  7.7.0 (OK)
matplotlib >=2.0.0:  3.1.0 (OK)
pylint >=0.25     :  2.3.1 (OK)

[ccordoba12]

Thanks for reporting. We'll take a look at this after we release beta5.

[MaartenBransen]

After some more testing I also found that this is an issue for folders open in the file explorer while other files are being added to that folder. If I add files to a folder (in e.g. Windows explorer) while that folder is open in the file explorer, Spyder will keep intermittently freezing until the copying of files is completed.

[kdl0013]

I do not know if this is the same issue as the one in the original post, but whenever I changed directories in spyder using the os.chdir function, my spyder freezes all the time. The only workaround that I have discovered is that when this starts occuring, I have to shut down my computer completely.

[SandeepShaw2017]

Facing similar problem ... have upgraded to 4.1.15 ... still facing the same problem ... console freezes when os.chdir to a folder having large number of files ....

[ccordoba12]

Note: A simple yet effective solution for this could be to disable showing icons per file type in the Files pane if we detect there are more than X files in the current directory.

[cleitonmoya]

Facing same problem with Spyder 5.4.2, | Qt 5.15.6 | PyQt5 5.15.7 | Linux 5.10.0-21-amd64 (Debian 11)

[dalthviz]

Hi, for the moment as a workaround, maybe disabling the Files plugin could help. For that go to Tools > Preferences > Plugins and uncheck Files

[cleitonmoya]

Hi @dalthviz, thanks for your suggestion, but I realized that I confused "files pane" with the "open file window' (File->Open). In my case, it's not the files pane that is freezing, but the open file window. Opening my folder (10328 files, 515MB) in the "files pane" worked fine for me on Windows 10, Debian 11 and Ubuntu 20.04.6. But the "open files window" freezed in Debian and Ubuntu (not Windows). Should I open a new issue? Best regards.

[dalthviz]

Oh I see thanks for the extra info @cleitonmoya ! I think that then creating a new issue is worthy 👍 Just in case, maybe your issue could be related with #16239 since most probably the same technical limitation is the thing that is causing trouble (using the PyQt widget for the open files dialog instead of the OS dialog on Linux)