[Development] Calling QWindow::requestActivate after QWindow::show and before QTest::qWaitForWindowActive

[Liang Qi]

On Tue, 2 Sept 2025 at 11:32, Liang Qi <cavendish.qi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 12 Aug 2025 at 02:53, EXT Mitch Curtis via Development
> <development at qt-project.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > There's a discussion on https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtdeclarative/+/666818 about whether we can standardise (by documenting in some form) that we shouldn't call requestActivate before qWaitForWindowActive. Essentially, existing code in tests looks like this:
> >
> >     window->show();
> >     window->requestActivate();
> >     QVERIFY(QTest::qWaitForWindowActive(window.data()));
> >
> > And would become this:
> >
> >     window->show();
> >     QVERIFY(QTest::qWaitForWindowActive(window.data()));
> >
> > As Axel has explained, this causes race conditions on XCB, and apparently is redundant on all platforms:
> >
> > > To begin with, an autotest should be as close as possible to a real world scenario.
> > > When the only window around is being shown, it is automatically activated. The additional window->requestActivate() redundant and not a real world scenario. This alone justifies its removal.
>
> Based on doc, https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qwindow.html
>
> void QWindow::show() Shows the window.
> void QWindow::requestActivate() Requests the window to be activated,
> i.e. receive keyboard focus.
>
> They are different things, show() will not make the window isActive(),
> requestActivate() is needed to test keyboard input and etc afterwards.
>
> Especially for Wayland, on Xcb or X11, perhaps our implementation
> forced the window to be active when show() was called. We have tickets
> in jira.

https://github.com/qt/qtbase/blob/dev/src/plugins/platforms/xcb/qxcbwindow.cpp#L773-L774
requestActivateWindow() was called in QXcbWindow::show() .

>
> Best regards,
> Liang
>
> >
> > I'd like to get agreement that this is the right thing to do on all platforms before proceeding (and then removing it en masse).
> >
> > Cheers.
> >
> > Confidential
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