slots + cached_property + sphinx

[AdrianSosic]

Hi @hynek, great to see that version 24.1.0 is finally out, have been looking forward to it for quite a while 👍🏼 🙃

One reason why I was waiting for it is because I wanted to enable slots for our classes that rely on cached_property. After upgrading to 24.1.0 and activating slots, everything seemed to work fine ... except for our docs 😕

We build them with sphinx and the error I'm getting indicates trouble coming from exactly the cached_property part. Here is an excerpt from the critical class

@define(frozen=True)
class DiscreteParameter(Parameter, ABC): 

  @cached_property
  @abstractmethod
  def comp_df(self) -> pd.DataFrame: ...

for which I get the following error during our sphinx built

/home/runner/work/baybe/baybe/.tox/docs-py312/lib/python3.12/site-packages/baybe/parameters/base.py:docstring of baybe.parameters.base.DiscreteParameter.__init__:1:<autosummary>:1:py:obj reference target not found: baybe.parameters.base.DiscreteParameter.comp_df

I haven't yet tried to pull together a minimal self-contained example, because I first wanted to ask if you already have an idea what could cause the problem – perhaps the cached_property integration is simply not yet correct/complete?

All I can say for now is:

• it works when I disable the slots
• it works when I turn the cached_property into a regular property

so the issue really does seem to be related to the latests attrs changes.

Let me know if you need more information!

[hynek]

a Short, Self Contained, Correct, Example would be great; my guess is that we’re wrapping the method and probably don’t copy over the docstring. maybe it’s just a matter of calling functools.update_wrapper.

which, of course, you’re very much free to try out and report back 😇

[AdrianSosic]

Hi @hynek, thanks for the quick answer. Seems exactly to be the case!

from functools import cached_property

from attrs import define


@define
class A:
    @property
    def x() -> int:
        """ABC"""
        return 0

    @cached_property
    def y() -> int:
        """DEF"""
        return 0


print(A.x.__doc__)
print(A.y.__doc__)

The first one correctly yields "ABC", the second is None.

[hynek]

Hmm, given how this is implemented (descriptors galore), I'm afraid this is not gonna be easy. I'm open to PRs, tho.

Here's a failing test case:

def test_slots_cached_property_retains_doc():
    """
    Cached property's docstring is retained.
    """

    @attr.s(slots=True)
    class A:
        x = attr.ib()

        @functools.cached_property
        def f(self):
            """
            This is a docstring.
            """
            return self.x

    assert "This is a docstring." in A.f.__doc__

[AdrianSosic]

@diabolo-dan: I saw that you added the support in #1200. Do you see any easy solution to the problem?

[diabolo-dan]

Hmm, having had a brief look, I don't think there's a solution compatible with the current approach. The problem is that slots are implemented with a C based descriptor, and that, afaict, you can't set a doc on them.

There is an alternative approach which involves wrapping the member_descriptor in a python class, at which point you could add the desired__doc__, as well as anything else desirable, the main drawback of that approach is that it costs a layer of indirection to every access of the cached property, but perhaps the performance hit is justified by the more consistent behaviour.

[hynek]

There is an alternative approach which involves wrapping the member_descriptor in a python class, at which point you could add the desired__doc__, as well as anything else desirable, the main drawback of that approach is that it costs a layer of indirection to every access of the cached property, but perhaps the performance hit is justified by the more consistent behaviour.

As far as I am concerned, I think we can afford an extra function call if it makes the whole thing a bit rounder. CodSpeed is gonna yell at us, if the penalty is too excessive.

[AdrianSosic]

That would be really great! I think otherwise the behavior (and especially the error message) would be really surprising to users.

@diabolo-dan: Is this something you'd be willing to take care of? (Since, honestly, I have zero clue at the moment about how the cached_property mechanics are implemented in attrs)

[AdrianSosic]

@diabolo-dan: ping 🙃 Let me know if you are too busy, I hope we can then find another way

[AdrianSosic]

@diabolo-dan: one more attempt here 🦤 I think otherwise there is not much progress to be expected on this topic ...

[diabolo-dan]

Hey, sorry for the delay, I started taking a look at this, and you can see a rough approach here:
#1357

One issue is that it needs to check all (attrs) super-classes for cached properties (even if it has none itself, in case one is overridden, e.g. with a normal slot). And that overhead might not be deemed acceptable?

If people think it's worth pursuing, then I should get a chance to clean it up a bit the week after next.