Autopilot uses mouse events, puts device in windowed mode

the same happens with any other tests

Why is it low?
It broke all autopilot tests. All. Not only the unity8 but all the UITK and all the project.

There is a workaround to locally force the Staged mode when tests are run, but for people who are validating MR with running AP tests it is far from obvious.

ok, i misunderstood - i thot you were running in windowed mode on purpose or something.

After some further discussion:
understanding is that AP is emulating mouse events
unfortunately for convergence, mouse events is precisely the trigger for windowed mode
so need to find a solution for AP that can work in the presence of converged code base.

Actually the requirement should be to enable autopilot tests to choose different input devices. For example some function method decoration to specify which types of input devices (touchscreens, keyboards, mice..) should be plugged for a particular test.

For now I'm changing the default setting in unity to stick to Staged mode.

Digging into this its not 'Mouse' events triggering this (you cannot create a Mouse instance on a device without installing all the XLib stuff).
It's the creation of a Touch device that is triggering this. You can observe this by shelling into a device and starting python3 terminal:
  >>> from autopilot.input import Touch
  >>> mytouch = Touch.create()
  >>> mytouch.close()

(When you close the python terminal unity will revert back to its normal state.)

Looking at what happens in touch creation this is the *paraphrased* code that triggers the change to windowed:

  >>> from evdev import UInput, ecodes as e
  >>> mydev = UInput(events={e.EV_ABS: [(e.ABS_X, (0, 0, 0, 0)), (e.ABS_Y, (0, 0, 0, 0))], e.EV_KEY: [e.BTN_TOOL_FINGER]}, name='autopilot-finger', version=0x2, devnode='/dev/uinput')
  >>> mydev.close() # Unity8 will become un-windowed at this point.

The actual code where its created lives here[1] the interesting events part here[2] and there are more events passed in but this is enough to trigger the windowing in unity8.

My thoughts are that either autopilot is creating the touch device incorrectly or that the detection of a mouse device in unity8 is picking this up inadvertently.

I'm currently seeking clarification re: the touch device creation (note this comment in the source[3]).

[1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~autopilot/autopilot/trunk/view/head:/autopilot/input/_uinput.py#L353
[2] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~autopilot/autopilot/trunk/view/head:/autopilot/input/_uinput.py#L282
[3] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~autopilot/autopilot/trunk/view/head:/autopilot/input/_uinput.py#L328

Thanks for this information Chris. I've ran this while watching the debug output for unity8 and turns out the above you registers a device with the evdev property ID_INPUT_TOUCHPAD. A touchpad is considered a "desktoppy" thing too, hence switches to windowed mode too.

I have modified your example to this (dropping the BTN_TOOL_FINGER):

mydev = UInput(events={e.EV_ABS: [(e.ABS_X, (0, 0, 0, 0)), (e.ABS_Y, (0, 0, 0, 0))]}, name='autopilot-finger', version=0x2, devnode='/dev/uinput')

and it does not register the Touchpad any more, hence not switching to Windowed mode. Changing the line to this:

mydev = UInput(events={e.EV_ABS: [(e.ABS_X, (0, 0, 0, 0)), (e.ABS_Y, (0, 0, 0, 0))], e.EV_KEY: [e.BTN_TOUCH]}, name='autopilot-finger', version=0x2, devnode='/dev/uinput')

Makes it correctly register as a ID_INPUT_TOUCHSCREEN and does not make unity8 go into windowed mode.

So seems the proper fix is to use , instead of BTN_TOUCH instead of BTN_TOOL_FINGER in autopilot's Touch device.

And here's the code in AP:

/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/autopilot/input/_uinput.py:

def _get_touch_tool():
    # android uses BTN_TOOL_FINGER, whereas desktop uses BTN_TOUCH. I have
    # no idea why...
    if autopilot.platform.model() == 'Desktop':
        touch_tool = e.BTN_TOUCH
    else:
        touch_tool = e.BTN_TOOL_FINGER
    return touch_tool

I don't know either why android uses a touchpad (BTN_TOOL_FINGER), but looking at this code it seems all our tests use a touchscreen (BTN_TOUCH) when running on desktop already.

I've pushed a fix to: lp:~mzanetti/autopilot/dont-use-touchpad-for-touch