Make com interfaces ide friendly #12201

feerrenrut · 2021-03-19T05:54:16Z

Link to issue number:

None
Related: #10916

Summary of the issue:

When working on modules that make heavy use of comInterfaces support from tools or IDEs would be helpful.
The files in comInterfaces are generated by comtypes.gen.
There are pairs of files, a module named with the comInterface ID, and one with a friendly name that imports symbols from the ID file.
The friendly name files generated by comtypes.gen expose symbols using runtime logic which some tools can not follow.
Making these symbols appear as errors/warnings about unknown symbols.

Description of how this pull request fixes the issue:

This PR modifies the build scripts to edit the friendly name file to include a fallback import statement which tools are more likely to be able to follow.

Essentially, the following:

from comtypes.gen import _C523F390_9C83_11D3_9094_00104BD0D535_0_3_0
globals().update(_C523F390_9C83_11D3_9094_00104BD0D535_0_3_0.__dict__)
__name__ = 'comtypes.gen.AcrobatAccessLib'

becomes:

try:
	from comtypes.gen import _C523F390_9C83_11D3_9094_00104BD0D535_0_3_0
except ModuleNotFoundError:
	import _C523F390_9C83_11D3_9094_00104BD0D535_0_3_0
	from _C523F390_9C83_11D3_9094_00104BD0D535_0_3_0 import *
globals().update(_C523F390_9C83_11D3_9094_00104BD0D535_0_3_0.__dict__)
__name__ = 'comtypes.gen.AcrobatAccessLib'

In addition, I noticed that Accessibility.py is generated, despite being commented out by the sconscript.
Presumably some other interface has a dependence on it?
Regardless this is used heavily in NVDA so it is now explicitly included.

The UIAutomationClient interface is not being generated, and instead was manually checked in.
This is because the version provided by Appveyor (and thus included in NVDA official builds) may not be as up to date as it could be. Instead, as new features of UIA are required this file must be manually updated by generating it on a machine that has the latest version available.

Testing strategy:

Built and ran locally.
Will test the appveyor build.
Ask community to test building and running on different versions of Windows.

Known issues with pull request:

None.

Change log entry:

Changes for devlopers:

- comInterfaces are now more easily consumable by developer tools such as IDEs.

Code Review Checklist:

This checklist is a reminder of things commonly forgotten in a new PR.
Authors, please do a self-review and confirm you have considered the following items.
Mark items you have considered by checking them.
You can do this when editing the Pull request description with an x: [ ] becomes [x].
You can also check the checkboxes after the PR is created.

At runtime the import from comtypes.gen will work, as a fallback for IDE / Tools that can't find that the relative import is used. Note: IDE's wont be aware of 'protected' symbols (beginning with underscore), they aren't imported with the from x import * statment.

No functional changes. Intended to make the following work easier to follow.

Generated "friedly name" comtypes.gen files are modified so that they can be used by tools / IDEs more easily. The files are read, the module name extracted, and the import statement replaced by a more elaborate version which include a fall back to a do a relative import if the comtypes.gen file is not found.

LeonarddeR · 2021-03-19T06:32:23Z

The UIAutomationClient interface was not being generated, and instead was manually checked in.

This was and is on purpose. The version of the com interface is tied to the operating system. If a newer version of the interface is released with a new version of Windows, it is usually not yet available in the appveyor image.

josephsl · 2021-03-19T06:43:40Z

Hi, for example, dialog detection through UIA was possible by using UIA COM interfaces from Windows SDK 10.0.17763, and I remember having to update UIA COM interface file then (NVDA 2018.3). This becomes more important once Microsoft releases IUIAutomation7 interface (saw this interface in a WIP build in 2019 but didn’t see it since then), and I look closely at changes to UIAutomationCore.dll whenever dev channel builds come out to spot and support UIA interface changes. When we do update the UIA COM interface, we wait until a Windows 10 feature update with COM interface changes to enter release preview channel before sending in a pull request to update the interface (same can be said about Windows 10 feature update/build map), or in some cases, I do my best to detect parts of the changed COM interface early in WinTenApps add-on. Thanks.

lukaszgo1 · 2021-03-19T11:38:55Z

Can't we use .idl files from Windows 10 SDK to generate UIAutomationClient COM interface similar to what were doing for IA2? We can require specific version of Windows 10 SDK and it isn't tied to the version of Windows in use.

CyrilleB79 · 2021-03-19T12:13:56Z

Could this PR change the behaviour described in #10833 (scons --clean deletes some files that are fetched from the repo)?
Thanks.

michaelDCurran · 2021-03-23T01:09:50Z

@feerrenrut yes several other typelibraries would have depended on the accessibility typelibrary. IAccessible2, and UI Automation being two of them.

michaelDCurran

We don't quite know what version of UIAutomationCore Appveyor has... I think its Windows server 2019 or something. Thus we cannot guarantee that UI Automation client will contain all possible interfaces and constants we need.
We need to either keep our pre-generated version of UIAutomationClient COM interfaces, or perhaps include uiAutomationCore.dll in miscDeps... though I think the latter would be breaking licensing restrictions.

source/comInterfaces_sconscript

Prevent it from being generated from an outdated UIA interface on Appveyor.

…Efriendly

Fixes #12281 Math can no longer be read in NVDA with mathPlayer. a regression introduced by pr #12201 comInterfaces_sconscript instructs comtypes to generate Python files from typelibs/mathPlayer.tlb. Comtypes produces MathPlayer.py (note the uppercase M). However, the sconscript target was hardcoded as "mathPlayer.py" (note the lowercase m). This has always been the case, and has not been a problem as scons and Windows is case insensitive and so Scons thought the target had been correctly created. However, pr #12201 makes use of the target's abspath property to rewrite the file with some extra imports. However, the path is made from the hardcoded target, so it has the lowercase m and therefore when the file is written out again, it has a lowercase m, and mathPres cannot then import MathPlayer with an uppercase M. Description of how this pull request fixes the issue: Correct the "mathPlayer.py" string in comInterfaces_sconscript to "MathPlayer.py".

feerrenrut added 6 commits March 19, 2021 13:05

Fix formatting of sconscript

83acfb1

No functional changes. Intended to make the following work easier to follow.

Explicitly gen Accessibility comInterface

b5170b0

Generate UIAutomation client

9ec6e5f

add explanation for comInterfaces package

1c8ade5

This comment has been minimized.

Sign in to view

fix lint warning

4e2ddbe

feerrenrut requested a review from michaelDCurran March 22, 2021 09:38

michaelDCurran requested changes Mar 23, 2021

View reviewed changes

source/comInterfaces_sconscript Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

source/comInterfaces_sconscript Show resolved Hide resolved

feerrenrut added 3 commits March 24, 2021 16:40

Don't generate UIAutomationClient

e2e528b

Prevent it from being generated from an outdated UIA interface on Appveyor.

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into makeComInterfacesID…

56376a2

…Efriendly

Update comInterfaces readme

cbf6478

feerrenrut requested a review from michaelDCurran March 24, 2021 08:49

michaelDCurran approved these changes Mar 25, 2021

View reviewed changes

feerrenrut added 3 commits March 25, 2021 12:18

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into makeComInterfacesID…

b7ea44d

…Efriendly

Update changes file for PR #12201

6c17522

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into makeComInterfacesID…

db8ee5f

…Efriendly

feerrenrut merged commit 8412adb into master Mar 25, 2021

feerrenrut deleted the makeComInterfacesIDEfriendly branch March 25, 2021 07:03

nvaccessAuto added this to the 2021.1 milestone Mar 25, 2021

feerrenrut mentioned this pull request Apr 9, 2021

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'comtypes.gen.MathPlayer' when import MathPlayer module #12281

Closed

michaelDCurran mentioned this pull request Apr 20, 2021

comInterfaces_sconscript: correct case of MathPlayer.py string. #12310

Merged

7 tasks

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

Make com interfaces ide friendly #12201

Make com interfaces ide friendly #12201

feerrenrut commented Mar 19, 2021 •

edited

Loading

This comment has been minimized.

LeonarddeR commented Mar 19, 2021

josephsl commented Mar 19, 2021 via email

lukaszgo1 commented Mar 19, 2021

CyrilleB79 commented Mar 19, 2021

michaelDCurran commented Mar 23, 2021

michaelDCurran left a comment

Make com interfaces ide friendly #12201

Make com interfaces ide friendly #12201

Conversation

feerrenrut commented Mar 19, 2021 • edited Loading

Link to issue number:

Summary of the issue:

Description of how this pull request fixes the issue:

Testing strategy:

Known issues with pull request:

Change log entry:

Code Review Checklist:

This comment has been minimized.

LeonarddeR commented Mar 19, 2021

josephsl commented Mar 19, 2021 via email

lukaszgo1 commented Mar 19, 2021

CyrilleB79 commented Mar 19, 2021

michaelDCurran commented Mar 23, 2021

michaelDCurran left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

feerrenrut commented Mar 19, 2021 •

edited

Loading