_populate() sets the populating attribute to prevent infinite recursion in
case a urlconf includes itself. The flag is a threadlocal to avoid a race
condition [1] where one thread sets the flag and another checks it, then
proceeds to access data that's supposed to be populated (e.g. _reverse_dict)
but isn't yet.

The potential still exists for a thread to set the threadlocal, then be
interrupted by a signal such as SIGALRM and raise before resetting the
threadlocal flag. In this scenario, subsequent calls to _populate() in the
same thread will short-circuit erroneously.

The bulk of the method was already wrapped in a try/finally in df41b5a0, but
since a signal interrupt can occur at any line executed by the interpreter,
this moves up the try to ensure threadlocal gets reset.

[1]: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/D_bIeinKHjE/4NmVQUJqAgAJ