Spyder debugging doesn't work on Windows with Spyder standalone version and Tkinter graphics backend

Description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

After Pressing Ctrl+F5 to start debugging, the following line appears in the console: !continue But nothing happens. The console appears frozen and has to be restarted.

Versions

• Spyder version: 5.3.2 (standalone)
• Python version: 3.8.10 64-bit
• Qt version: 5.15.2
• PyQt5 version: 5.15.7
• Operating System: Windows 10

Dependencies

# Mandatory:
atomicwrites >=1.2.0                 :  1.4.1 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0                      :  5.0.0 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0                  :  2.1.0 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0                 :  2.1.1 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111          :  20200713 (OK)
intervaltree                         :  None (OK)
IPython >=7.31.1;<8.0.0              :  7.34.0 (OK)
jedi >=0.17.2;<0.19.0                :  0.18.1 (OK)
jellyfish >=0.7                      :  0.9.0 (OK)
jsonschema >=3.2.0                   :  4.7.2 (OK)
keyring >=17.0.0                     :  23.6.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0                      :  6.5.0 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0                     :  1.4.0 (OK)
paramiko >=2.4.0                     :  2.11.0 (OK)
parso >=0.7.0;<0.9.0                 :  0.8.3 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0                      :  4.8.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4                    :  0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3                         :  5.9.1 (OK)
pygments >=2.0                       :  2.12.0 (OK)
pylint >=2.5.0;<3.0                  :  2.14.4 (OK)
pyls_spyder >=0.4.0                  :  0.4.0 (OK)
pylsp >=1.5.0;<1.6.0                 :  1.5.0 (OK)
pylsp_black >=1.2.0                  :  1.2.1 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=3.0.2;<3.1.0            :  3.0.3 (OK)
qstylizer >=0.1.10                   :  0.2.1 (OK)
qtawesome >=1.0.2                    :  1.1.1 (OK)
qtconsole >=5.3.0;<5.4.0             :  5.3.1 (OK)
qtpy >=2.1.0                         :  2.1.0 (OK)
rtree >=0.9.7                        :  1.0.0 (OK)
setuptools >=49.6.0                  :  63.1.0 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6                       :  5.0.2 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=2.3.2;<2.4.0        :  2.3.2 (OK)
textdistance >=4.2.0                 :  4.3.0 (OK)
three_merge >=0.1.1                  :  0.1.1 (OK)
watchdog                             :  2.1.9 (OK)
zmq >=22.1.0                         :  23.2.0 (OK)

# Optional:
cython >=0.21                        :  0.29.30 (OK)
matplotlib >=3.0.0                   :  3.5.2 (OK)
numpy >=1.7                          :  1.22.4 (OK)
pandas >=1.1.1                       :  1.4.3 (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0                       :  1.8.1 (OK)
sympy >=0.7.3                        :  1.10.1 (OK)

# Spyder plugins:
spyder_terminal.terminalplugin 1.2.2 :  1.2.2 (OK)

[ccordoba12]

When looking for an old issue, I found out that this problem was reported before on issue #17523, and we came to the same conclusion: the problem is the Tkinter backend.

So I’m closing this issue in favor of that one.

[dalthviz]

Just in case, using the Tkinter backend and cliking Enter after entering debug mode causes the IPdb prompt to get stock. If I try to interrupt the kernel I got (on Windows with the Spyder standalone version 5.3.3):

Exception in Tkinter callback
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\dalth\AppData\Local\Programs\Spyder\pkgs\tkinter\__init__.py", line 1889, in __call__
    try:
KeyboardInterrupt

Checked with a conda based installation and seems like this issue doesn’t happen there. As suggested by @impact27 a workaround for this is to change the graphics backend from Tkinter to something else (inline, qt5).