Stop infinite loop calculating traces due to is_active event

[rosteen]

Use cached trace when methods are triggered by is_active events rather than constantly recalculating. Previous behavior:

Screen.Recording.2024-05-07.at.3.08.31.PM.mov

[kecnry]

Can you please stress in an in-line comment (here and for the other cache) that this should only ever be used for the interactive previews and should always be recomputed when the user is calling a method (since the cache could be out of date if the user is updating traitlets with the plugin inactive).

[kecnry]

Thanks!

[pllim]

Drive by comment: Does this cache never have to be invalidated?

[rosteen]

Drive by comment: Does this cache never have to be invalidated?

I think it will be recalculated any time that would be the case. @kecnry can you think of any time it would need to be invalidated?

[rosteen]

There is an extra blink where the trace previews briefly disappear with this PR, but that is probably better than getting stuck in an infinite loop.

[pllim]

[kecnry]

can you think of any time it would need to be invalidated?

Any time a traitlet is changed and the plugin is inactive, the cache will be out-of-date. This is what skip_if_no_updates_since_last_active is supposed to handle, but clearly isn't doing a good job here. I can try to dig to see if I can fix the underlying cause, but since there is a rush for this, this might be a good incremental improvement and we can live with the edge-case problem.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Attention: Patch coverage is 83.33333% with 2 lines in your changes are missing coverage. Please review.

Project coverage is 88.70%. Comparing base (bcea12f) to head (a52f9d9).
Report is 6 commits behind head on main.

Files	Patch %	Lines
...plugins/spectral_extraction/spectral_extraction.py	83.33%	2 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #2861      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   88.93%   88.70%   -0.24%     
==========================================
  Files         111      111              
  Lines       17165    17122      -43     
==========================================
- Hits        15266    15188      -78     
- Misses       1899     1934      +35     

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[rosteen]

Closing this in favor of #2862 .