Pieter Hintjens (ØMQ-project的创始人之一)表示，使用ØMQ并避免使用锁、互斥对象、事件等同步原语，是编写多线程程序最明智、最安全的方法:

http://zguide.zeromq.org/py:all#Multithreading-with-ZeroMQ

这包括告诉子线程，它应该取消它的工作。这可以通过为线程配备ØMQ-socket并轮询该套接字以获得一条表示它应该取消的消息来实现。

该链接还提供了一个使用ØMQ的多线程python代码示例。

如果您试图终止整个程序，您可以将线程设置为“守护进程”。看到 Thread.daemon

虽然它相当古老，但对一些人来说这可能是一个方便的解决方案:

一个扩展线程模块功能的小模块—— 允许一个线程在另一个线程的上下文中引发异常 线程。通过触发SystemExit，你最终可以杀死python线程。

import threading
import ctypes     

def _async_raise(tid, excobj):
    res = ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(tid, ctypes.py_object(excobj))
    if res == 0:
        raise ValueError("nonexistent thread id")
    elif res > 1:
        # """if it returns a number greater than one, you're in trouble, 
        # and you should call it again with exc=NULL to revert the effect"""
        ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(tid, 0)
        raise SystemError("PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc failed")

class Thread(threading.Thread):
    def raise_exc(self, excobj):
        assert self.isAlive(), "thread must be started"
        for tid, tobj in threading._active.items():
            if tobj is self:
                _async_raise(tid, excobj)
                return

        # the thread was alive when we entered the loop, but was not found 
        # in the dict, hence it must have been already terminated. should we raise
        # an exception here? silently ignore?

    def terminate(self):
        # must raise the SystemExit type, instead of a SystemExit() instance
        # due to a bug in PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc
        self.raise_exc(SystemExit)

因此，它允许“线程在另一个线程的上下文中引发异常”，通过这种方式，被终止的线程可以处理终止，而无需定期检查中止标志。

然而，根据其原始来源，这段代码有一些问题。

The exception will be raised only when executing python bytecode. If your thread calls a native/built-in blocking function, the exception will be raised only when execution returns to the python code. There is also an issue if the built-in function internally calls PyErr_Clear(), which would effectively cancel your pending exception. You can try to raise it again. Only exception types can be raised safely. Exception instances are likely to cause unexpected behavior, and are thus restricted. For example: t1.raise_exc(TypeError) and not t1.raise_exc(TypeError("blah")). IMHO it's a bug, and I reported it as one. For more info, http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-August/068158.html I asked to expose this function in the built-in thread module, but since ctypes has become a standard library (as of 2.5), and this feature is not likely to be implementation-agnostic, it may be kept unexposed.

我对这个游戏已经很晚了，但我一直在与一个类似的问题作斗争，下面的内容似乎为我完美地解决了这个问题，并且让我在守护子线程退出时做一些基本的线程状态检查和清理:

import threading
import time
import atexit

def do_work():

  i = 0
  @atexit.register
  def goodbye():
    print ("'CLEANLY' kill sub-thread with value: %s [THREAD: %s]" %
           (i, threading.currentThread().ident))

  while True:
    print i
    i += 1
    time.sleep(1)

t = threading.Thread(target=do_work)
t.daemon = True
t.start()

def after_timeout():
  print "KILL MAIN THREAD: %s" % threading.currentThread().ident
  raise SystemExit

threading.Timer(2, after_timeout).start()

收益率:

0
1
KILL MAIN THREAD: 140013208254208
'CLEANLY' kill sub-thread with value: 2 [THREAD: 140013674317568]

在Python和任何语言中，突然终止线程通常都是一种糟糕的模式。考虑以下情况:

线程持有一个必须正确关闭的关键资源 线程创建了其他几个线程，这些线程也必须被杀死。

如果你能负担得起(如果你在管理自己的线程)，处理这个问题的好方法是有一个exit_request标志，每个线程都会定期检查它，看看它是否到了退出的时候。

例如:

import threading

class StoppableThread(threading.Thread):
    """Thread class with a stop() method. The thread itself has to check
    regularly for the stopped() condition."""

    def __init__(self,  *args, **kwargs):
        super(StoppableThread, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self._stop_event = threading.Event()

    def stop(self):
        self._stop_event.set()

    def stopped(self):
        return self._stop_event.is_set()

在这段代码中，当您希望线程退出时，应该在线程上调用stop()，并使用join()等待线程正确退出。线程应该定期检查停止标志。

然而，在某些情况下，您确实需要终止一个线程。例如，当您正在包装一个外部库时，该库正忙于长时间的调用，并且您希望中断它。

下面的代码允许(有一些限制)在Python线程中引发异常:

def _async_raise(tid, exctype):
    '''Raises an exception in the threads with id tid'''
    if not inspect.isclass(exctype):
        raise TypeError("Only types can be raised (not instances)")
    res = ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(ctypes.c_long(tid),
                                                     ctypes.py_object(exctype))
    if res == 0:
        raise ValueError("invalid thread id")
    elif res != 1:
        # "if it returns a number greater than one, you're in trouble,
        # and you should call it again with exc=NULL to revert the effect"
        ctypes.pythonapi.PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(ctypes.c_long(tid), None)
        raise SystemError("PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc failed")

class ThreadWithExc(threading.Thread):
    '''A thread class that supports raising an exception in the thread from
       another thread.
    '''
    def _get_my_tid(self):
        """determines this (self's) thread id

        CAREFUL: this function is executed in the context of the caller
        thread, to get the identity of the thread represented by this
        instance.
        """
        if not self.isAlive():
            raise threading.ThreadError("the thread is not active")

        # do we have it cached?
        if hasattr(self, "_thread_id"):
            return self._thread_id

        # no, look for it in the _active dict
        for tid, tobj in threading._active.items():
            if tobj is self:
                self._thread_id = tid
                return tid

        # TODO: in python 2.6, there's a simpler way to do: self.ident

        raise AssertionError("could not determine the thread's id")

    def raiseExc(self, exctype):
        """Raises the given exception type in the context of this thread.

        If the thread is busy in a system call (time.sleep(),
        socket.accept(), ...), the exception is simply ignored.

        If you are sure that your exception should terminate the thread,
        one way to ensure that it works is:

            t = ThreadWithExc( ... )
            ...
            t.raiseExc( SomeException )
            while t.isAlive():
                time.sleep( 0.1 )
                t.raiseExc( SomeException )

        If the exception is to be caught by the thread, you need a way to
        check that your thread has caught it.

        CAREFUL: this function is executed in the context of the
        caller thread, to raise an exception in the context of the
        thread represented by this instance.
        """
        _async_raise( self._get_my_tid(), exctype )

(根据Tomer Filiba的《Killable Threads》改编。关于PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc返回值的引用似乎来自旧版本的Python。)

正如文档中所指出的，这不是一个神奇的子弹，因为如果线程在Python解释器之外忙，它将不会捕获中断。

这段代码的一个良好使用模式是让线程捕获特定的异常并执行清理。这样，您可以中断任务，但仍然可以进行适当的清理。

from ctypes import *
pthread = cdll.LoadLibrary("libpthread-2.15.so")
pthread.pthread_cancel(c_ulong(t.ident))

t是线程对象。

阅读python源代码(Modules/threadmodule.c和python /thread_pthread.h)，你可以看到Thread。Ident是一个pthread_t类型，所以你可以使用libpthread在python中做任何pthread可以做的事情。