background-zmq-ipython

Run some IPython ZMQ kernel in the background, without an interactive shell. You can connect to that kernel remotely via ZMQ.

pip install background_zmq_ipython

Usage:

import background_zmq_ipython
background_zmq_ipython.init_ipython_kernel()

The kernel will then run in the background in its own thread. The init will print some message similar to this on stdout:

To connect another client to this IPython kernel, use:
jupyter console --existing kernel-1111.json

Now, after you connected, how to access globals from the main module? E.g. let’s say there is a variable a.

sys.modules["__main__"].a should work. Via sys.modules, you can access all the imported modules. Or just do import mod again.
Get the stack of all/other frames via sys._current_frames(), and there you can access the globals from other threads as well.

You can provide user_ns to init_ipython_kernel, e.g:

init_ipython_kernel(user_ns=globals())

or:

init_ipython_kernel(user_ns={"main_globals": globals()})

or:

init_ipython_kernel(user_ns={"a": a})

Alternatives / related links:

pydbattach
Twisted SSH (example code)
IPython.embed_kernel in a background thread (example code). This has some issues (e.g. here; messing around with sys.stdout etc).
This code was introduced in this StackOverflow question, and also discussed in this IPython GitHub issue #8097, but it has become outdated, so this project provides a rewrite / updated code, and the goal was also an easy to install pip package.

Metadata

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Source distribution for background-zmq-ipython 1.20230717.114829
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background_zmq_ipython-1.20230717.114829.tar.gz	9.1 kB	Apr 23, 2025	Details

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