I get "audio I/O stuck... closing audio" messages all the time... even when i'm not doing anything gui related.

I would like to be able to minimize this; or at the very least, be able to restart the global DSP without clicking "compute audio" in the main window, or using the keyboard shortcut.

Is there any way to do this? Is there any way of troubleshooting what is causing these dropouts?

Are there any workarounds? What exactly causes audio I/O to get "stuck"?

The only time I ever get that message is when my computer goes to sleep. Sometimes it unsticks itself, and sometimes it doesn't. What are you doing when it sticks? Does it happen only with certain patches?

It happens regularly and unpredictably, doesn't matter what patch I'm using. I'm running Linux ALSA, and it's possible to reduce the occurrence by giving PD exclusive hardware access, but it doesn't eliminate the problem.

I don't think there's anything I can do to eliminate this problem; redrawing arrays for example will almost always cause a dropout.

I'm more interested in finding a way to programmatically restart the DSP, is there any way to do this?

Not sure about the programmatic restarting, I suppose it may be possible to use:
[r pd]--->[route dsp]
And then use the output (0 when DSP is off) to inform DSP restart with a {; pd dsp 1} message...
However I would be surprised if that didn't cause some instability and crashiness, at the very least dropouts when it's switching...

Perhaps see if your ALSA drivers are up to date/right, or try running with OSS drivers (if supported - 'pd -oss').