Ideas from Wayne

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:02

Guys, for late bound unit testing, have you considered using a wrapper Assert class (and Fakes), using a predeclared ID. The Assert class might look something like this:

Private LateBoundAssert As Object

Private Sub Class_Initialize()
Set LateBoundAssert = CreateObject("Rubberduck.AssertClass")
End Sub

Public Sub AreEqual(Expected As Variant, Actual As Variant, Message As String)
LateBoundAssert.AreEqual Expected, Actual, Message
End Sub

With the predeclared ID, you could then make use of intellisense, so Assert.AreEqual would work just like the early bound version

IvenBach

@Mat'sMug ^

Mat's Mug

hmm, our late-bound setup code looks pretty much exactly like that, no?

WaynePhillipsEA

You currently don't get any intellisense

Mat's Mug

I guess the predeclared ID would be some attribute decorating the AssertClass interface?

WaynePhillipsEA

No, it's the VB_PredeclaredID attribute

on a class named Assert in the VBA project.

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 20:05

Oh (facepalm)

Vogel612

so you want to wrap the access to Rubberduck's LateBound Assert in a VBA class module to enable IntelliSense?

sounds simple and reasonable

Mat's Mug

yeah

WaynePhillipsEA

Yeah, I think it would offer the best of both worlds (late and early bound)

I'm just thinking out loud really

Mat's Mug

it wasn't done because we wanted to interfere as little as possible with the users' code... but I don't think it's going overboard. I like it :)

#FunFact the original VBA implementation did use a predeclared ID Assert class

WaynePhillipsEA

It would only add two class modules

IvenBach

Dec 19, 2017 20:07

The benefits of Rubberduckin out loud.

Mat's Mug

and we could even have an option for it

> [x] Create Assert VBA wrapper class
> [ ] Create Fakes VBA wrapper class

WaynePhillipsEA

sounds plausible.

Mat's Mug

yeah, that way existing (user) code would still work

that said we're really starting to need per-project settings

WaynePhillipsEA

What are you using to invoke the methods? Application.Run?

Mat's Mug

depends on the host application, but yeah

Outlook is... more complicated :)

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:13

Yeah, vbWatchdog doesn't use Application.Run, but I don't think I can expose how I got round that ;)

Have you thought about using class modules for the unit tests instead? I guess you probably have

Mat's Mug

absolutely

except...

couldn't get .net to create instances

that'd be like the holy grail

WaynePhillipsEA

Oh, yes you should be able to do that

Mat's Mug

if we can do that then we can have an actual mocking framework

wait, how?!!?!

WaynePhillipsEA

grab the ITypeInfo from any IDispatch object implemented by your VBA project, grab the parent ITypeLib from that, and then enumerate all the ITypeInfos in the project. Once you find one, you can call ITypeInfo::CreateInstance

Mat's Mug

you gotta be kidding

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:16

No, that should work

Mat's Mug

@ThunderFrame needs to see this

this

Confirming - that doesn't require the obsolete tibinfo library, right?

WaynePhillipsEA

should... can't guarantee it without actually implementing it. But unless VBA screwed up the whole ITypeInfo implementation, it should work

@this no

The IDispatch interface itself exposes members to grab the raw ITypeInfo

From there you get the parent (giving you an ITypeLib). And from there you enumerate the coclasses

this

Assuming that works, then we would be able to do what we need from a class and implement all tests as a class which also avoid the host-specific implementation of Application.Run

Mat's Mug

@this it doesn't fix that ;-)

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:21

The only issue is getting a hold of the initial object from the VBA project.

Mat's Mug

I like how you make it sound trivial

well, it is

WaynePhillipsEA

You'd have to have a stub routine that passes an object to your managed side so that you can then grab the initial ITypeInfo

Mat's Mug

you just need to get the VBA code to pass the instance, right?

yeah

WaynePhillipsEA

And so you'd still need Application.Run or equivalent to get it started. But it can be any generic VBA created object that you pass

Mat's Mug

a bit like we grab the VBE instance with parser.Initialize Application.VBE in the (experimental) reflection API

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:25

There is a cheat for getting the ITypeInfo actually

Mat's Mug

or equivalent - e.g. get ahold of the VBA runtime's CallByName method, and invoke it

WaynePhillipsEA

No that needs an object too

Mat's Mug

something tells me there's black magic going on :)

29 mins ago, by Vogel612

relevant: Case 211: "No Magic"

Quack Exchange

0

Q: Handling lazy-loading webpages using vba

After a long try I've been able to create a script in vba which can successfully handle webpages with lazy-load. It can reach the bottom of a slow loading webpage if the hardcoded number of the loop is set accurately. I tried with few such pages and found it working flawlessly. The one I'm pastin...

WaynePhillipsEA

Yeah, and I'm not sure if you'll go with it.

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 20:28

if it involves injecting precompiled assembler into user code, ...yeah not sure we want to go there ;-)

WaynePhillipsEA

not yet anyway ;)

no, it's not that bad

If you grab the VBE.ActiveProject.References COM object, and grab the 5th pointer from the object pointer, that's the ITypeInfo

but I didn't tell you that

Mat's Mug

huh

lol

just curious about how you'd possibly find out these kinds of things

WaynePhillipsEA

don't ask :)

Mat's Mug

I didn't!

IvenBach

@Mat'sMug I never thought I'd hear this come from Mug.

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 20:31

@IvenBach lol, I know nothing

WaynePhillipsEA

That's an easy way of getting the ITypeInfo without having to get any live object instance

IvenBach

Nothing is relative...

WaynePhillipsEA

And that has worked since the first version of VBA6 (and VB6 as well I think)

Vogel612

@WaynePhillipsEA you do know that this is "public record"?

WaynePhillipsEA

Actually sorry it's obviously not the ITypeInfo( which is instance specific), it's the project ITypeLib

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 20:33

yeah was going to say :)

WaynePhillipsEA

Well I could be anyone pretending to be anyone

;)

Mat's Mug

I could nuke it from orbit if it's too sensitive

IvenBach

@Mat'sMug Breadcrumb got me there. Not sure what it should correctly display though.

WaynePhillipsEA

No, it's fine. It's self obtained info, so I'm with it.

If it possibly helps you out, I don't see why I can't share it.

Mat's Mug

:D

thanks a bunch. FWIW vbWatchDog is quite possibly the only VBIDE add-in we couldn't eat lunch if we tried

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:37

Some stuff I wouldn't be willing to divulge, but tidbits like above are fine

well I'm honored to hear that :) And FWIW Rubberduck is probably the only addin I would openly recommend to all VBA developers

9

apart from my own of course haha

Mat's Mug

that's... wow.

WaynePhillipsEA

You've made great improvements since when I last looked at it

IvenBach

Mug will now print that out and hang it on his wall, next to wedding and children's photos.

Mat's Mug

so.. wait a minute.. if we can get the ITypeLib for the active VBA project, then we don't need to parse anything to grab module & member attributes, do we?

no mug, no we don't

WaynePhillipsEA

what type of attributes do you mean?

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 20:42

e.g. VB_Description and VB_PredeclaredId/VB_Exposed

which we're already picking up in the type libs we're COM-reflecting

WaynePhillipsEA

Yeah, they should be accessible

Mat's Mug

i.e. that code is pretty much already written

this simplifies so many things

without needing to implement a code pane from scratch

WaynePhillipsEA

ouch you're not planning that are you?

Mat's Mug

well....

WaynePhillipsEA

you've got your work cut out!!

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 20:44

the idea is to have custom syntax highlighting, code folding, tearable tabs, and put the "intelli" back into "intellisense"

WaynePhillipsEA

wow. that's going to be quite involved.

IvenBach

@Mat'sMug For those that don't have a description and error out I want to log them. I'm stumbling a little bit. Once you're done.

Mat's Mug

@WaynePhillipsEA yeah. hopefully we'll be done before Microsoft figures out a way to put the VBIDE out of service

:)

WaynePhillipsEA

@Mat'sMug you're ambitious, I'll give you that

Mat's Mug

"Bring the VBE into the 21st Century"

^ mission statement :)

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:47

Well, yes, a new code pane would certainly help with that

IvenBach

Some would call us duckbrained.

Mat's Mug

the only problem is that it would have to be design-time only

'cause no way I'm going to get my hands into the debugger

WaynePhillipsEA

But.... perhaps vbWatchdog could expose some stuff to help you out

Mat's Mug

you'd give us some compiled blackbox API to play with?

WaynePhillipsEA

just thinking out loud. obviously, we'd have to be careful with regards to the non OSS nature of vbWatchdog

But if I were to expose a few things, and Rubberduck could optionally hook onto them, perhaps that could work.

@Mat'sMug, yeah, something like that. Much like the VBE itself

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 20:51

except with a better API :D

WaynePhillipsEA

naturally

Mat's Mug

one problem is that having a .dll like that in RD's repository would make it very easy for anyone to grab and play with

WaynePhillipsEA

true, but we might be able to come up with some sort of solution.

Vogel612

that does sound wonderful, but maybe we should go one step at a time :)

it's not like we have ~400 feature requests on our hands that also want their share of attention :)

Mat's Mug

lol

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:55

nobody will notice if you give them a shiny new code pane and debugger

nobody will care :)

Mat's Mug

Sep 21 at 16:41, by Mat's Mug

Mar 3 '15 at 19:11, by skiwi

So when will you drop the IDE in which you are building the plugin, and writ eyour own IDE?

WaynePhillipsEA

Yes, that might be an idea

Mat's Mug

Aug 21 '16 at 20:44, by ThunderFrame

Aug 14 at 11:58, by RubberDuck

Hey guys. You know how we're always joking about writing our own IDE? I bet (if we could ever find time to write code for fun again) we could fork VS Code. http://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/4292/775

so many instances of "own IDE" in the transcript of this chat..

my favorite:

Apr 17 '15 at 15:41, by RubberDuck

Yeah. Given that, you can't @RichardFoxton. Not unless you want to build your own IDE from scratch. Even the Mug and I aren't that crazy. — RubberDuck 9 secs ago

WaynePhillipsEA

I'd be up for that. I wrote my own frontend C++ compiler, so I've got experience.

Mat's Mug

ouch

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 20:58

using the superb LLVM optimizing backend compiler.

I guess we're now a little off track. sorry about that.

Mat's Mug

eh, happens all the time, no worries :)

WaynePhillipsEA

how many core devs on this team?

IvenBach

4-5ish?

WaynePhillipsEA

cool

Mat's Mug

a handful... there's @M.Doerner, @Hosch250, myself (haven't committed anything meaningful in a long while though), @this, ...lots of recent newcomers, and even more fly-bys

IvenBach

Dec 19, 2017 21:01

All at varying levels.

WaynePhillipsEA

I don't think Rubberduck likes parsing my vbMAPI class modules

Mat's Mug

hmm, parser bugs are down to near-zero by now... what's it complaining about?

WaynePhillipsEA

It's taking a long time for about 20 classes

Mat's Mug

just parsing?

I bet SLL mode is failing

(there would be a warning in the logs for it)

WaynePhillipsEA

It's sitting there eating CPU%

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 21:04

that's embarrassing

no parser error reported?

WaynePhillipsEA

nope

M.Doerner

Are there long chains of boolean expressions?

We had one bug report where this was causing an incredibly long parse time.

Mat's Mug

I wonder how/whether Antlr4.7 is going to improve that

Duga

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] MDoerner synchronized pull request #3615: COM Release for menu items and command bar

M.Doerner

Actually, it might, or rather the necessary grammar changes.

I think it was constantly backtracking because of the large amount of Not operators.

Duga

Dec 19, 2017 21:08

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] build for commit 25ba0642 on unknown branch: AppVeyor build failed

BUILD FAILURE!

Mat's Mug

@Hosch250 was making progress on the Antlr upgrade, I wonder how close to a PR he's at

@Duga why are you trying to copy to the debug folder ffs

WaynePhillipsEA

I'll be amazed if this eventually completes. I would guess an infinite loop, since CPU is using one core, and RAM use is static.

M.Doerner

My yml looks exactly the same as the one on next.

The word Debug does not even appear in it.

this

@WaynePhillipsEA doesn't MAPI generally have cyclic properties?

Mat's Mug

@M.Doerner I know - fwiw that comment was directed at appveyor, not you ;-)

this

Dec 19, 2017 21:11

maybe that's what sending the parser down a rabbit hole

M.Doerner

I tested with the code. At about half the number of conditions, it completed in 2 minutes.

Mat's Mug

@WaynePhillipsEA and I thought @ThunderFrame's code was evil!

WaynePhillipsEA

@Mat'sMug do you want me to leave it running

Nelson Vides

@Mat'sMug did I hear Antlr4.7? :D

this

@Mat'sMug just to clarify - that's MAPI OM, not his classes that exposes it. The MAPI itself is evil, IMHO. :)

Mat's Mug

Dec 19, 2017 21:13

oh

M.Doerner

Btw, each module is parsed on only one thread; the paralellism is in the modules.

WaynePhillipsEA

I honestly don't think there's much evil code.

Mat's Mug

so it's the COM Collector that's crawling then

WaynePhillipsEA

Not by my standards

Mat's Mug

'Project Name = MyProject
'Module Name = MyModule
Option Explicit

Private MyVar As MyProject
Private MyVar1 As MyModule

Private Type MyProject
  MyModule As String
  MySub As String
End Type

Private Type MyModule
  MyVar As String
  String As MyProject
End Type

Private Type MySub
  MyVar As MyModule
  MyVar1 As MyProject
End Type

Private Type MyVar
  MyProject As MyModule
End Type

Sub MySub()

  Dim MyProject As MyProject
  Dim MyModule As MyProject.MyModule.MyProject
  Dim MySub As MySub

^ resolves fine

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 21:15

Yeah, I've got a project with similar stuff to that. Loads of edge cases for my decompiler

this

@Mat'sMug to be fair, while that's evil, it's not really cyclic. I seem to remember that with MAPI, they have list of properties that can be themselves properties to another properties that is already self-referenced.... At least that's how I remembered it.

WaynePhillipsEA

but vbMAPI is nothing like that.

Mat's Mug

it's a type library?

WaynePhillipsEA

No, it's similar implementation to vbWatchdog. But that resolves fine now in the latest release.

this

@WaynePhillipsEA what about Max's question? If the library has to make use of expressions that requires lot of left-recursions that can wreck the parser.

or at least make it go really slow

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 21:18

Yeah, maybe. I'll leave it running to see if it completes

Mat's Mug

either it does, or some call stack ends up blowing

WaynePhillipsEA

If it doesn't complete, I'll try to reduce it down. But that might be a few days before I get to it.

this

@Mat'sMug so the parser will do recursion, not loops?

WaynePhillipsEA

Just did a quick test with my personal 'evil' project. only 3 parser errors, which ain't bad really.

Mat's Mug

@this IDK. pretty sure at least some of the parser logic is recursive though

Nelson Vides

Dec 19, 2017 21:23

@this as far as I got into antlr, it is recursive almost by definition, isn't it?

Mat's Mug

@WaynePhillipsEA different errors? or 3 instances of the same grammar bug?

WaynePhillipsEA

3 different errors

Mat's Mug

interesting

I can smell the colons from here :)

(right?)

this

@NelsonVides I'm generally the guy who try to implement recursions as a loop... generally speaking. Sometime you really can't avoid recursions but whenever you are able, it's better to use a loop so that you never have to worry about stack overflow, only the hard drive capacity of your PC. :)

Mat's Mug

and line continuations?

this

Dec 19, 2017 21:25

But TBH, I don't think I have the brainpower to improve what ANTLR guys did soo.. there's that.

WaynePhillipsEA

One looks like a colon bug, yes

Mat's Mug

@this most likely the problem is with our grammar, not with Antlr itself

Nelson Vides

@this I'm aware of the issues with recursion and stack overflows. But that's how grammars work for the most part, with heavily nested recursion.

WaynePhillipsEA

Dim AObject As Object
AObject.Line -(3, 4)

Line is a special method

and the above is valid, at least at compilation level

Nelson Vides

Rule A have some branching, decides to take Rule B, which has some more branching and it might decide to take Rule A again (and it might then take a different path C the second time it enters A, or the third, or the fourth...

this

Dec 19, 2017 21:29

@WaynePhillipsEA @ThunderFrame would love that.

Mat's Mug

@WaynePhillipsEA hmm I clearly recall seeing a parser rule specifically for that weird-syntax special instruction

Nelson Vides

The idea of recursion is later very well improved by compilers, sometimes. Haskell and family for example, has a very awesome implementation of tail recursion that virtually solves the stack overflow problem, making the stack frame reuse itself every time, therefore, you have a binary loop but your code is organised as recursion, which is very elegant

Mat's Mug

i.e. it's supposed to be handled

this

@NelsonVides that's cool. I didn't know that about Haskell.

WaynePhillipsEA

If True Then:
End Sub

this

Dec 19, 2017 21:31

@WaynePhillipsEA inside a procedure?

Mat's Mug

Huh

WaynePhillipsEA

Sorry, yes, I didn't copy in the Sub

Sub Blah()

AObject.Line (1, 2)-(3, 4), , BF

Nelson Vides

@WaynePhillipsEA That's evil code. I'll slap a colleague who writes that in production. But don't take my words wrong, evil is motivating.

Mat's Mug

hmm, it is legal

this

has to be- since that's a single line If statement, followed by an empty line then End Sub. Earlier @M.Doerner pointed out that something like If 1 = 1 Then: Debug.Print "true": Else Debug.Print "false" would be actually a "single-line If statement", in spite of the colons supposedly separating the instruction.

WaynePhillipsEA

Dec 19, 2017 21:34

Both of these:

AObject.PSet (1, 2)
AObject.PSet (1, 2), 555 ' FLAG 2 means Color has been specified

And this: AObject.Scale

Mat's Mug

the good news is that they're all quite obscure edge cases :)

WaynePhillipsEA

AObject.Print AVariant; Spc(5); Tab; Spc(6); AVariant, Spc(0); Tab(55)

Oh yes, absolutely.

M.Doerner

@Mat'sMug The post build action is in the project file of Rubberduck.Inspections, and it has been there forever.

Mat's Mug

@M.Doerner I know.. I don't understand why AppVeyor is trying to copy to the debug folder when it's building a release config

M.Doerner

It is literaly written in the project file.

Duga

Dec 19, 2017 21:38

[rubberduck-vba/Rubberduck] BitSprocket opened issue #3626: Code inspections identifying Procedure 'X' not used regarding Form event handlers

> Hello all. I am getting Procedure 'ButtonX_Click' is not used in the Code Inspections window on the latest release. I've only started developing the UI for the app I've been working on for the last few months and it seems all the control events are being flagged this way. I can easily stop inspecting for them but I'll lose visibility on dead code. I *think* I saw a related issue here on github but now I can't find it. Is this a regression or am I doing something wrong?

Access 2016 64 b

Mat's Mug

from an earlier passing build:

> RubberduckTests -> C:\projects\rubberduck\RubberduckTests\bin\Release\RubberduckTests.dll
copy Rubberduck.Inspections\bin\Release\Rubberduck.Inspections.dll RetailCoder.VBE\bin\Release\Rubberduck.Inspections.dll
1 file(s) copied

M.Doerner

Well, that is probably from the action in the yml.

WaynePhillipsEA

anyway, gtg. 'night all

VBA Rubberducking

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