displot instantly close upon display when using seaborn 0.11.2 with matplotlib 3.5.2

I encountered a case of figure window closing instantly when trying to display a displot.

To reproduce, try the following with seaborn version 0.11.2 and matplotlib version 3.5.2

import seaborn
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

sns.displot([0,0,1,1,2,3,3,1,0])
plt.show()

In seaborn version 0.11.2, a figure window will flash on the screen and instantly disappear, whereas in seaborn version 0.11.1, a histogram bar plot is displayed in a new window that persists until I closed it.

After some digging, I suspect that this is due to the handling of the backend entry of matplotlib.rcParams. rcParams["backend"] by default is initialized with a sentinel object matplotlib.rcsetup._auto_backend_sentinel. The first time someone tries to access rcParams["backend"] , matplotlib will call matplotlib.pyplot.switch_backend to swap in the actual backend object. The function matplotlib.pyplot.switch_backend, when called, will first close all currently open figures.

In seaborn version 0.11.2, displot will try to create a FacetGrid object in which to place the plot. In the constructor of FacetGrid, at line 408, it creates a Figure object within a context manager. As a result, the rcParams["backend"] gets reverted to the sentinel object upon exit from the with block. The created Figure would get automatically closed the next time the code tries to access rcParams["backend"].

[kailizcatman]

I tested the branch in #2925 in my environment with matplotlib 3.5.2. It worked as expected. Thank you for working on this.

There is probably a question of philosophy and intention when it comes to using rc_context. It seems that some matplotlib developers believe rcParams and related mechanisms should only be used by end users in a somewhat interactive context.

[kailizcatman]

Let me comment on the issue to see what the matplotlib people thinks. My naive thinking is that any workaround for this issue is bound to have some side-effect (i.e. rcParams["backend"] become updated).