Implementation notes

• The pyautogui sends input to the process in focus, which is the spf subprocess.
• If spf is not exited correcly via q, it causes weird vertical tabs in print statements from python
• There is some flakiness in sending of input. Many times, Ctrl+C is received as C in spf
  • If first key is Ctrl+C, its always received as C
• Note : You must keep your focus on the terminal for the entire duration of test run. pyautogui sends keypress to process on focus.

To-dos

• Write testsuite to validate new files getting created on first launch
  • We recently had a bug slip into main, where lastVersionFile would not get written

Input to spf

Pyautogui alternatives

POC with pyautogui as a lot of issues, stated above.

Linux / macOS

• xdotool
  • Seems complicated. It wont be able to manage spf process that well
• mkfifo / Manual linux piping
  • Too much manual work to send inputs, even if it works
• tmux
  • Supports full terminal programs and has a python wrapper library
  • See docs/tmux.md
  • Not available for windows
• References
  • https://superuser.com/questions/585398/sending-simulated-keystrokes-in-bash

Windows

• Autohotkey
  • No better than pyautogui
• ControlSend and SendInput utility in windows
  • Isn't that just for C# / C++ code ?
• Python ctypes
  • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62189991/how-to-wrap-the-sendinput-function-to-python-using-ctypes
• pywin32 library
  • Create a new GUI window for test
  • Use win32gui.SendMessage or win32gui.PostMessage
  • Probably the correct way, but I havent been able to get it working.
  • First we need to get it send input to a sample window like notepad, etc. Then we can make superfile work
• pywinpty
  • Heavy installations requirements. Needs Rust, and Visual studio build tools.
  • Rust cargo not found
    • Needs rust
  • link.exe not found ( the msvc targets depend on the msvc linker but link.exe was not found )
    • Needs to install Visual Studio Build Tools (build tools and spectre mitigated libs)
    • Had to manually find link.exe and put it on the PATH
  • You might get error of unable to find mspdbcore.dll (I havent been able to solve it so far)
    • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67328795/c1356-unable-to-find-mspdbcore-dll
• References
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/tmux/comments/l580mi/is_there_a_tmuxlike_equivalent_for_windows/

Directory setup

• Programmatic setup is better.
• We could keep test directory setup as a config file - json/yaml/toml
• or as a hardcoded python dict
• Turns out, a in-memory fs is better. We have utilities like copy to actual fs and print tree
  • Although it has a limitation of not being able to work with large files, as that would consume a lot of RAM
  • For large files, we could do actually make them only on the actual filesystem, and not use in-memory fs
  • https://docs.pyfilesystem.org/en/latest/reference/memoryfs.html
  • https://docs.pyfilesystem.org/en/latest/guide.html

Tests and Validation

• Each tests starts independently, so there is no strict order
• Hardcoded validations . Predefined test, where each test has start dir, key press, and validations
• We could have a base Class test. where check(), input(), init(), methods would be overrided
• It allows greater flexibility in terms of testcases.
• Abstraction layer for spf init, teardown and inputm