SceneTree::call_group_flags expects i64 as flag, not GroupCallFlags

[kzerot]

SceneTree's method call_group_flags expects i64 as a flag, not the GroupCallFlags struct. Also, "ord" field is i32, not i64. It's working, but syntax is not very obvious:

tree.call_group_flags(GroupCallFlags::GROUP_CALL_DEFERRED.ord().into() ,"group".into(), "method".into(), &[]) 

[Bromeon]

The problem is that these bitfield types are sometimes exposed as enums in the GDExtension JSON, and their parameter/return types use int.

Examples where the bitfield type is used (search bitfield:: in JSON):

• InputEventWithModifiers::get_modifiers_mask() -> KeyModifierMask

There are also interesting cases that look like bitfields, but are not:

• Object::connect(signal, callable, flags)
  • ConnectFlags has full flag semantics and exponential enumeration scheme, but is not a bitfield.
• SceneTree::call_group_flags(flags, ...) -- GroupCallFlags is not a bitfield.
• Tree:set_drop_mode_flags(flags) -- DropModeFlags is not a bitfield.

There may also be situations where a type is correctly marked as bitfield, but still used as int in APIs. Please comment if you know such cases.

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I don't know how to easily detect that an enum is a bitfield, or that an int parameter/return type represents a bitfield type. There are of course some options:

1. Manually annotating known cases.
2. Heuristic based on method and parameter names.
   • This is going to be tough, given the above inconsistencies. Maybe also taking into account "meta": "int32" or so...
3. Combine (1) and (2): heuristic with exceptions/additions.
4. Implement a solution upstream, that is, fix the types in Godot's API. Might be problematic with backwards compatibility.

[Lemiczek]

To be honest, this does feel like an upstream issue that we can do very little about, without facing increasing headaches.

For the ConnectFlags example specifically, this was already called out upstream here: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/74829, which seems to have hit a bit of a standstill, with no further comment on breaking compatibility by making it a Bitfield<ConnectFlags>. Maybe we come back to this if/once this is fixed for Godot 5.x? Since this is a breaking change for GDExtensions, and thus more suited for major releases?

If we were to manually annotate, I think we'd have to mark it behind a compatibility flag of sorts, since the extension API can change, and cause issues for these specific edge-cases way down the line. 🙁

We could maybe do the heuristics approach by looking at each value and seeing if it's a power of two? (There also weird edge-cases to this however, since certain flags can have duplicate values or have the value 0)

Actually we can't sinceArrayFormat (for example) despite being set as a flag/bitfield has the values 3, 7, 13, 19, etc...

I don't think we can even look for enums that end with Flags, since there are legitimate enums with that name, that go sequentially (0,1,2,3).

I really don't see a good way to solve this from our side.

Also, why are these things so inconsistent in the first place?! 😭