I'm trying to put Pywinauto, Wine and Docker to work together for a desktop RPA project.
The general idea is to run a Windows application within Wine inside a Ubuntu Docker container and then run a Python script with Pywinauto to take control over that application. I'm also using Xvfb to emulate a display.
After a lot of research to get here now I'm facing the problem when running the Python script with pywinauto import:
AttributeError: module 'comtypes.gen' has no attribute 'UIAutomationClient'
This error happens when some script tries to import pywinauto.
VERSIONS
Ubuntu 20.04
Wine 8.0.1 (Windows 10, using winehq-stable)
Python 3.11.4
Pywinauto 0.6.8
Comtypes 1.2.0
Here are some of the project files to help reproduce the error.
Dockerfile:
FROM ubuntu:20.04
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive
ARG WINE_VERSION=winehq-stable
ARG PYTHON_VERSION=3.11.4
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED=0
RUN set -x \
&& dpkg --add-architecture i386 \
&& mkdir -pm755 /etc/apt/keyrings \
&& apt-get update -qy \
&& apt-get install --no-install-recommends -qfy gpg-agent rename apt-transport-https software-properties-common winbind cabextract wget curl zip unzip xvfb xdotool x11-utils xterm \
&& wget -nv https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key \
&& apt-key add winehq.key \
&& add-apt-repository 'https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu' \
&& apt-get update -qy \
&& apt-get install --install-recommends -qfy $WINE_VERSION winetricks \
&& apt-get clean \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
ENV WINEARCH win64
ENV WINEDEBUG fixme-all
ENV WINEPREFIX /wine
RUN set -x \
&& winetricks -q win10
ENV W_PYTHON_PATH="C:/Python"
RUN set -x \
&& for msifile in `echo core dev exe lib path pip tcltk tools`; do \
wget -nv "https://www.python.org/ftp/python/$PYTHON_VERSION/win32/${msifile}.msi"; \
wine msiexec /i "${msifile}.msi" /qb TARGETDIR="$W_PYTHON_PATH" \
rm ${msifile}.msi; \
done \
&& cd /wine/drive_c/Python
RUN echo 'wine '\''$W_PYTHON_PATH\python.exe'\'' "$@"' > /usr/bin/python \
&& echo 'wine '\''$W_PYTHON_PATH\Scripts\easy_install.exe'\'' "$@"' > /usr/bin/easy_install \
&& echo 'wine '\''$W_PYTHON_PATH\Scripts\pip.exe'\'' "$@"' > /usr/bin/pip \
&& echo 'wine '\''$W_PYTHON_PATH\Scripts\pyinstaller.exe'\'' "$@"' > /usr/bin/pyinstaller \
&& echo 'wine '\''$W_PYTHON_PATH\Scripts\pyupdater.exe'\'' "$@"' > /usr/bin/pyupdater \
&& echo 'assoc .py=PythonScript' | wine cmd \
&& echo 'ftype PythonScript=$W_PYTHON_PATH\python.exe "%1" %*' | wine cmd \
&& while pgrep wineserver >/dev/null; do echo "Waiting for wineserver"; sleep 1; done \
&& chmod +x /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/easy_install /usr/bin/pip /usr/bin/pyinstaller /usr/bin/pyupdater \
&& (pip install -U pip || true) \
&& rm -rf /tmp/.wine-*
ENV W_DRIVE_C="/wine/drive_c"
ENV W_WINDIR_UNIX="$W_DRIVE_C/windows"
ENV W_SYSTEM64_DLLS="$W_WINDIR_UNIX/system32"
ENV W_TMP="$W_DRIVE_C/windows/temp/_$0"
ENV PYTHON_EXE="$W_DRIVE_C/Python/python.exe"
ENV PYTHON="/wine/drive_c/Python/python.exe"
ENV PIP="/wine/drive_c/Python/Scripts/pip3.11.exe"
RUN wine $PYTHON -m venv venv
ENV PIPENV="/wine/drive_c/Python/Scripts/pipenv.exe"
RUN mkdir /src/ && ln -s /src /wine/drive_c/src
COPY . /src
WORKDIR /wine/drive_c/src/
ENV WINEPATH="C:\Python\python.exe;C:\Python\Scripts;C:\Python\Lib\site-packages;"
ENV VIRTUAL_ENV=venv
RUN wine $PYTHON -m venv $VIRTUAL_ENV
ENV WINEPATH="$VIRTUAL_ENV/bin:$WINEPATH"
RUN wine $PIP install -r requirements.txt
# comtypes workaround
CMD [ "$PYTHON /wine/drive_c/Python/Scripts/clear_comtypes_cache.py -Y" ]
CMD [ "wine $PIP uninstall comtypes" ]
CMD [ "wine $PIP install --no-cache-dir comtypes==1.2.0" ]
ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/sh", "-c", "/usr/bin/xvfb-run -a $@", "" ]
CMD [ "wine", "/wine/drive_c/Python/python.exe", "bot.py" ]
requirements.txt (full file since I can't really remember the specific libs):
attrs==23.1.0
certifi==2023.5.7
charset-normalizer==3.1.0
comtypes==1.2.0
graypy==2.1.0
idna==3.4
isodate==0.6.1
lxml==4.9.2
Pillow==9.5.0
platformdirs==3.5.1
pycryptodome==3.18.0
pydantic==1.10.8
python-dotenv==1.0.0
pytz==2023.3
pywinauto==0.6.8
requests==2.31.0
requests-file==1.5.1
requests-toolbelt==1.0.0
setuptools==67.8.0
six==1.16.0
typing-extensions==4.6.2
urllib3==2.0.2
wenv==0.5.1
zeep==4.2.1
pytest==7.3.2
Imports excerpt from bot.py, where the error happens:
(...)
from pywinauto import Application # line 10, where the error is in traceback
from pywinauto.controls.uia_controls import TabControlWrapper
from pywinauto.findwindows import ElementNotFoundError
(...)
Traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Z:\src\main.py", line 8, in <module>
from robot.bot import Bot
File "Z:\src\robot\bot.py", line 10, in <module>
from pywinauto import Application
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\__init__.py", line 89, in <module>
from . import findwindows
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\findwindows.py", line 42, in <modu
le>
from . import controls
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\controls\__init__.py", line 36, in
<module>
from . import uiawrapper # register "uia" back-end (at the end of uiawrapper
module)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\controls\uiawrapper.py", line 47,
in <module>
from ..uia_defines import IUIA
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\uia_defines.py", line 181, in <mod
ule>
pattern_ids = _build_pattern_ids_dic()
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\uia_defines.py", line 169, in _bui
ld_pattern_ids_dic
if hasattr(IUIA().ui_automation_client, cls_name):
^^^^^^
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\uia_defines.py", line 50, in __cal
l__
cls._instances[cls] = super(_Singleton, cls).__call__(*args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Python\Lib\site-packages\pywinauto\uia_defines.py", line 61, in __ini
t__
self.ui_automation_client = comtypes.gen.UIAutomationClient
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: module 'comtypes.gen' has no attribute 'UIAutomationClient'
X connection to :99 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
X connection to :99 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
From traceback there's a file main.py that imports bot.py but I adapted the Dockerfile to work with only a bot.py as it shows in files above.
Some considerations:
- Checked and Wine doesn't have the
UIAutomationClientDLL (onlyUIAutomationCore) - Tried using
clear_comtypes_cache.pyas a workaround in Dockerfile but didn't work (if I did it correctly) - Tried different versions of
comtypesand found that this kind of error was happening until fixed on1.1.9(latest is1.2.0, I'm using this one)
