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Unix cache signals lose their structure argument and are rejected by AT-SPI #818

Description

@luccahuguet

The Unix adapter emits AddAccessible and RemoveAccessible with flattened D-Bus signatures. Each signal should contain one structure argument, but the shared emit_cache_signal helper passes that structure directly as the message body.

Reproduced on upstream commit 466e24e252103f4d82bd6fbab98141b551e46e0c, using its unchanged lockfile: accesskit_unix 0.24.0, zbus 5.19.0, zvariant 5.15.0, and Rust 1.87.0 on x86_64 Linux.

Signal Expected wire signature Observed wire signature
AddAccessible ((so)(so)(so)iiassusau) (so)(so)(so)iiassusau
RemoveAccessible (so) so

GNOME AT-SPI 2.58.1 rejects the malformed AddAccessible signature; its RemoveAccessible handler likewise requires (so).

To reproduce, save the regression patch below as regression-only.patch and apply it to that upstream commit, then run:

dbus-run-session -- cargo test --locked -p accesskit_unix \
  cache_signals_preserve_struct_arguments -- --ignored

The test calls the production helper on a private bus and checks the encoded D-Bus SIGNATURE header and round-tripped values. It fails with the original helper and passes after the two-line correction below. Inspecting only zbus's parsed signature can hide the missing structure boundary.

The proposed correction in PR #819 is to pass &(body,) to emit_signal, with the generic bound changed from DynamicType to Type so the tuple can be serialized. No dependency or lockfile changes are needed.

We also verified the backported correction in our Venus terminal client on native Wayland with Orca 49.4 and AT-SPI 2.58.1. Previously Orca retained stale focus and reported “No selected text” after returning from scrollback despite a valid selection. With the correction it reported the exact selected text é 界 without a focus-repair action. Those native checks used accesskit_unix 0.22.1, zbus 5.18.0, and zvariant 5.13.1; current upstream was verified at the wire level.

regression-only.patch (test only; production helper unchanged)
diff --git a/adapters/unix/src/atspi/bus.rs b/adapters/unix/src/atspi/bus.rs
index 3368185..ca9857d 100644
--- a/adapters/unix/src/atspi/bus.rs
+++ b/adapters/unix/src/atspi/bus.rs
@@ -523,3 +523,74 @@ where
         Err(_) => Ok(default),
     }
 }
+
+#[cfg(all(test, not(feature = "tokio")))]
+mod tests {
+    use super::*;
+    use atspi::CacheItem;
+    use futures_lite::StreamExt;
+    use zbus::{MatchRule, MessageStream, message::Type};
+
+    fn assert_wire_signature(message: &zbus::Message, signature: &str) {
+        let bytes = message.data().bytes();
+        let length = bytes[12..16].try_into().unwrap();
+        let length = match bytes[0] {
+            b'l' => u32::from_le_bytes(length),
+            b'B' => u32::from_be_bytes(length),
+            _ => panic!("invalid D-Bus byte order"),
+        } as usize;
+        // Inspect the encoded header: zbus normalizes outer parentheses when reading it.
+        let mut field = vec![8, 1, b'g', 0, signature.len() as u8];
+        field.extend_from_slice(signature.as_bytes());
+        field.push(0);
+        assert!(
+            bytes[16..16 + length]
+                .windows(field.len())
+                .any(|w| w == field)
+        );
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    #[ignore = "requires a private D-Bus session; run with dbus-run-session"]
+    fn cache_signals_preserve_struct_arguments() {
+        futures_lite::future::block_on(async {
+            let conn = Connection::session().await.unwrap();
+            let rule = MatchRule::builder()
+                .msg_type(Type::Signal)
+                .interface("org.a11y.atspi.Cache")
+                .unwrap()
+                .path(cache_path())
+                .unwrap()
+                .build();
+            let mut signals = MessageStream::for_match_rule(rule, &conn, Some(2))
+                .await
+                .unwrap();
+            let executor = Executor::new();
+            let bus = Bus {
+                conn: conn.clone(),
+                _task: executor.spawn(std::future::pending(), "unused"),
+                socket_proxy: SocketProxy::new(&conn).await.unwrap(),
+                desktop: Arc::new(OnceLock::new()),
+            };
+            let item = CacheItem::default();
+            bus.emit_cache_signal("AddAccessible", &item).await.unwrap();
+            let added = signals.next().await.unwrap().unwrap();
+            assert_eq!(added.header().member().unwrap().as_str(), "AddAccessible");
+            assert_wire_signature(&added, "((so)(so)(so)iiassusau)");
+            let (received,): (CacheItem,) = added.body().deserialize().unwrap();
+            assert_eq!(received, item);
+
+            bus.emit_cache_signal("RemoveAccessible", &item.object)
+                .await
+                .unwrap();
+            let removed = signals.next().await.unwrap().unwrap();
+            assert_eq!(
+                removed.header().member().unwrap().as_str(),
+                "RemoveAccessible"
+            );
+            assert_wire_signature(&removed, "(so)");
+            let (received,): (ObjectRefOwned,) = removed.body().deserialize().unwrap();
+            assert_eq!(received, item.object);
+        });
+    }
+}

Activity

  1. luccahuguet commented on Oct 10, 2026

    @luccahuguet
    ContributorAuthor

    and thanks for maintaining this awesome project =)

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