Update brlapi to 0.7

[LeonarddeR]

After hours of pine, I've finally been able to build the brltty bindings for Python 3.7. Here is a summary of the build steps:

• Install mingw32 and MSYS1
• Installed most of the dependencies noted in https://brltty.app/doc/Windows.html
• Patched python 3 distutils to compile with my local vc++ build, linked against vcruntime140.dll
• Only take the pyd file from the custom build. The two dll's are from the official build of the BRLTTY team, version 6.0

[josephsl]

Hi,

No errors this time. Note that just copying the CP37 extension (pyd) may suffice, as doing that produces no errors. But for sake of completeness, I think it'd be best to upgrade to brlapi 0.7.

Thanks.

[LeonarddeR]

brlapi will only import with the 0.7 dll.

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Op 13 jun. 2019 om 16:26 heeft Joseph Lee ***@***.***> het volgende geschreven: Hi, No errors this time. Note that just copying the CP37 extension (pyd) may suffice, as doing that produces no errors. But for sake of completeness, I think it'd be best to upgrade to brlapi 0.7. Thanks. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[feerrenrut]

it might be handy to have debug symbols as well. Is it possible to generate those too?

[LeonarddeR]

Wow! Ehm, I have no idea. These libs are all compiled with mingw32, so I don't think that's able to provide msvc compatible debug symbols.

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Op 13 jun. 2019 om 17:20 heeft Reef Turner ***@***.***> het volgende geschreven: it might be handy to have debug symbols as well. Is it possible to generate those too? — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[feerrenrut]

Producing debug versions of the dll should just require using the -g option with gcc

An intro here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4671900/how-do-i-use-the-mingw-gdb-debugger-to-debug-a-c-program-in-windows

I would take a look at the make file and see if it has a debug target. If you do manage to produce debug versions of the dll and debug information, I suggest we put them in a debug folder. We want to use the release version (no debug information) normally, but being able to swap it out with a debug version with debug database can help solve some tricky issues.

There is also the possibility to convert debug information to pdb.
see: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19269350/how-to-generate-pdb-files-while-building-library-using-mingw

[LeonarddeR]

I will give it a try.

[feerrenrut]

Though, since we did not have them before, we may not need them now. But since you have gone to the effort of building this, we might as well spend a little time to investigate getting debug info.

[michaelDCurran]

My opinion is that we shouldn't hold this back for debugging -- we never had it anyway. Note that without this, the braille gestures unit test is freezing on appveyor.

[michaelDCurran]

@LeonarddeR I assume you've been able to successfully use this in NVDA with brlTty?

[LeonarddeR]

@michaelDCurran: honestly, not yet. I only tested whether a Python 3 instance of NVDA was able to load the extension module and whether I could call functions on the module. It is likely that the brltty driver needs updates to support the update from 0.5x to 0.7x.
I can do some more tests tomorrow, though.

[LeonarddeR]

I've now come as far as connecting to the brlapi service from the new binding. Unfortunately, I can't get BRLTTY to work with my Handy Tech Active Braille, but that's definitely an issue I'm having with BRLTTY, not with NVDA.

I think it is save to merge this. Then, I will file a follow up pr to update misc-deps and the BRLTTY driver itself