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Is WinAppDriver dead? #1103

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dquist opened this issue Mar 16, 2020 · 79 comments
Open

Is WinAppDriver dead? #1103

dquist opened this issue Mar 16, 2020 · 79 comments

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@dquist
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dquist commented Mar 16, 2020 •
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I am getting the strong impression that this project is getting abandoned by Microsoft.

There are hundreds of open issues with no feedback, and the little triaging that takes place generally seems to consist of the issue being closed without resolution, or a suggestion that a community workaround be added to the wiki.

The last pre-release was over 5 months ago with no release activity since then and no roadmap as to what we should expect.

Is Microsoft still investing in this project or should we look at other tools? It used to be that @yodurr and @timotiusmargo were very active with WinAppDriver, but their GitHub activity have gone almost completely inactive. @hassanuz, the program manager, hasn't had any GitHub activity since November January!

What's going on with this project? If Microsoft wants us to take this tool seriously then there needs to be some sort of roadmap or communication with developers. But there's only radio silence.
@kfrajtak
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Self promo here. If you are interested in a similiar project, have a look at my project https://github.com/kfrajtak/WinAppDriver (in retrospective, I should have chosen different name).

@jsa34
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jsa34 commented Mar 17, 2020

It would be great if this were able to be open-sourced to allow real community support...

@DLightstone
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You won't get an answer by posting a question here. Not enough public exposure.

The follow-us-on Twitter or Facebook accounts are probably a more appropriate forum

@dquist
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dquist commented Mar 17, 2020

@DLightstone I don't disagree, but doesn't that speak to the fact that there's zero community engagement here? This GitHub project is a ghost town.

I did just discover from Twitter that @yodurr no longer works at Microsoft - he's now at Valve, so that could explain some of it.

image

@lsoft
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lsoft commented Mar 17, 2020

could anyone who have twitter account ask Hassan Uraizee (https://twitter.com/mrhassanuz) about the situation with this project? At general can community do anything to shed some light? I am not strong in such matters...

@DLightstone
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@dquist

Whether there is or is not zero community support is irrelevant.

As I understand things (from https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/testingspot-blog/winappdriver-and-desktop-ui-test-automation/ba-p/1124543 ) WinAppDriver is the recommended test framework.

The absence of responses to questions which only Microsoft employees can answer speaks volumes.

@dquist
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dquist commented Mar 17, 2020

The absence of responses to questions which only Microsoft employees can answer speaks volumes.

Indeed, and I should have been more clear. I mean community engagement from Microsoft, not from outsiders. Microsoft needs to engage with developers here if they want us to take this project seriously.

It would be one thing if this was just a side project, but as you pointed out, WinAppDriver is now the recommended test framework to replace CodedUI.

I suspect that this project was the brainchild of @timotiusmargo who was by far the most active maintainer early on in the project, but has now moved onto other things and no one has replaced him.

@alonrbar
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As I understand things (from https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/testingspot-blog/winappdriver-and-desktop-ui-test-automation/ba-p/1124543 ) WinAppDriver is the recommended test framework.

The post that you mention is quite new (01-23-2020) and someone had just posted a question there a few hours ago. Hopefully upvoting enough here and there may help in getting some answers...

@dquist
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dquist commented Mar 18, 2020

Good find, I upvoted the comment there too.

That one is a recent article, but Microsoft has been saying CodedUI is deprecated and pushing for WinAppDriver as early as 2018. See Coded UI tests.

image

Here's the snippet from the docs for the deprecation notice which was added in November 2018.
https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/visualstudio-docs/blob/master/docs/test/includes/coded-ui-test-deprecation.md

Perhaps @gewarren could give us some context around this change since she was the snippet author.

@DLightstone
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@alonrbar

New or not it references
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/test/use-ui-automation-to-test-your-code?view=vs-2019

which contains

Note

Coded UI Test for automated UI-driven functional testing is deprecated. Visual Studio 2019 is the last version where Coded UI Test will be available. We recommend using Selenium for testing web apps and Appium with WinAppDriver for testing desktop and UWP apps. Consider Xamarin.UITest for testing iOS and Android apps using the NUnit test framework.

@alonrbar
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You are right, CodedUI is deprecated for pretty long time now.
If you can upvote the comment I pointed out to, or add a comment of your own that would be great. Maybe we'll be able to get Microsoft's attention.

@DLightstone
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I see no reason for beating a dead horse

Community supported efforts only work out when the source coed is available.
You simply can't have your cake and eat it.

Upvoting is a waste of time. For the present I am only going to monitor for meaningful posts and solutions

@alonrbar
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I see what you mean there.

Even so, I believe that taking two minutes to vote up for a tool I currently work with on a daily basis worth the long shot of it having some effect.
This issue is only 2 days old and already have 7 vote ups, maybe a few days/weeks more will accumulate to something more meaningful.

Cheers

@hassanuz
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Hey everyone,

Just wanted to provide a brief update: we're shuffling a few things around internally with the project. I expect to share more information with you all in the coming weeks.

Thank you for your patience & sorry for the delays!

@dquist
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dquist commented Mar 20, 2020

Hey @hassanuz, thanks for chiming in!

I expect to share more information with you all in the coming weeks.

More information would be great, but having to wait a couple weeks just to get an answer as to whether a project is dead or not... doesn't exactly inspire a whole lot of confidence.

My team has been dabbling in WinAppDriver for ~6 months or so and we're sort of at the point where we either need to commit or go another route. It would be super helpful if you could at least share if this project is still going to be maintained going forward. We've been happy with the project so far, but don't want to get stuck with a dead-end framework.

@ashkaps
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ashkaps commented Mar 20, 2020

Same for us.
Winappdriver is a huge part of our automations. We would like to know if that’s dependable.

@lsoft
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lsoft commented Mar 20, 2020

@hassanuz, thanks for reply, but we definitely need a public Microsoft position about the future of WinAppDriver. We invest money and time writing tests with WinAppDriver, but at the moment we are not sure we are not in trouble. (I feel that ghost of silverlight is flying somewhere near :) )
Nevertheless thank for your work on WinAppDriver!

@venkatrao-rgare
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@hassanuz First of all thanks for your work on WinAppDriver.
I agree with the comments above. I have spent some time using it with C# and I have also spent some more time using it with Javascript.
It would be great if Microsoft can inform us of their intentions with continuing development and support of this tool.

@hassanuz
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Thanks everyone for the feedback. I wanted to circle back and iterate that the project is still active! To add more color: I personally transitioned to a new role at Microsoft. Albeit this, as far as I'm aware, Microsoft is deciding between a few different options (hence the update coming in a few weeks) that all are paths to continuing to move the product forward.

I appreciate everyone’s patience through this and any problems this may have caused.

@dquist
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dquist commented Mar 22, 2020

Hey @hassanuz, congrats on the new role!

And thank you for the confirmation that this project is still alive and on Microsoft's radar. Will eagerly be anticipating further details. 😎

@adrozdowski
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Hi @hassanuz,

I have a question. Maybe you are able to answer me. Are you going to develope UI Recorder? I am asking because unfortunately UI Recorder cannot recognize all controls.

@tdurova
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tdurova commented Apr 7, 2020

@adrozdowski if you need the UI recorder to get element locators, I would recommend using these tools:

  1. Wpf inspector "https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=wpfinspector"
  2. C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.18362.0\x64\inspect.exe - inspector from Windows SDK

The officially recommended "Accessibility Insights" app is very heavy and hanging.

@RoakyWood
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RoakyWood commented Apr 15, 2020 •
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We are all QA People in one form or another. We expect minimal quality. This is an embarrassing look for Microsoft, they killed CodedUI with this never-updated-out-of-sync-with-selenium-and-appium-and-azure replacement. They even released a WinAppDriver task for Azure (UPDATE! 1. I got a test working on an Azure Pipeline VSTest Release Task! - the secret was to have WinAppDriver Already running or as an always-on service - this avoids the can’t find or attach to open app/process/window whatever error. So it’s a good product - please don’t abandon it, MS! 2. I also got it working by using the Azure Hosted VS 2019 Agent using the canned Azure WinAppDriver Tasks.). They never did an update to replace the long-deprecated desired capabilities. MS needs to wake up and realize that the people here represent companies that spend a lot of money for Microsoft products and for Azure. Get focus back on this project Fulfill your promises. P.S. I don't blame Hassan or Yosef. This is management taking their eye off the prize.

@ghost
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ghost commented Apr 16, 2020

I appreciate the feedback that @hassanuz has provided here, but I find myself in the same situation as other folks; I want to commit to this, because having a "Selenium-like" tool across the board for desktop, mobile, and web testing, makes so much sense. Unfortunately, this driver project, even from its inception, was supported by 1.5-2 people. I hope the upcoming news is worth the wait... like this is being adopted as a formal stream of work in some major team, rather than being supported by 1.5 guys.

@0x7c13
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0x7c13 commented Apr 16, 2020 •
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We are all QA People in one form or another. We expect minimal quality. This is an embarrassing look for Microsoft, they killed CodedUI with this never-updated-out-of-sync-with-selenium-and-appium-and-azure replacement. They even released a WinAppDriver task for Azure (Anyone able to get it to work?). They never did an update to replace the long-deprecated desired capabilities. MS needs to wake up and realize that the people here represent companies that spend a lot of money for Microsoft products and for Azure. Get focus back on this project Fulfill your promises. P.S. I don't blame Hassan or Yosef. This is management taking their eye off the prize.

I remember last summer when I started my Notepads project. I was looking for a solution to run UI tests since there is no way for me to test anything on UWP app logic (and a lot of potential issues I found can only be verified by UI tests). Glad I found this WinAppDriver thingy. But at the time, the docs and samples were all out dated. So I had to fixed them by myself with some extra works. Finally I decided to wait until they update everything so I can add it to my project with confidence. Now almost 1 year past, nothing has been updated at all. Really? My app's user base grows from zero to almost 100k but still, running naked since there is no tests at all. I had to be real careful the whole year last year to make sure I was not going to break anything. Recently I am focusing on refactoring my code but again, tests were missing and progress has to be made with extreme care... I do not want to blame anyone here. I am just feeling super frustrated.

@RoakyWood
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Just to reiterate, everyone here is a MS customer and wants to use MS products to test. We are your friends, not your enemies. Hassan and Yosef created a very nice tool here. We just want to use it for UI testing and be able to use it for CICD testing in Azure.

@lsoft
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lsoft commented Apr 17, 2020

WinAppDriver is not dead, but on ventilator :) @hassanuz any news?

@stu4355226
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I mean if Microsoft is not going to maintain or give up on WinAppDriver. At least make it open sourced so community can take over stuff, at least I will do it.

For the past couple years the tools keeps changing and I am tried of doing the same thing over and over again.

It is really awkward when many people asking for it and MS just becomes a dead fish.

@RoakyWood
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To be fair, Hassan said a few weeks, and he seems like a cool cat, so let’s see how it plays out and maybe share help/workarounds in the meantime.

@ghost
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ghost commented Apr 23, 2020

I hope that open sourcing this is part of the plan. Everything else about Selenium \ Appium is open source.

@amittal004
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@Druzle I have implemented POM with Winapp driver, let me know if you need help

@ashkaps
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ashkaps commented Jul 16, 2020

There are some talks about WinApp driver on MS tech community blog but does not look like any promising roadmap is coming along anytime soon.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/testingspot-blog/winappdriver-and-desktop-ui-test-automation/ba-p/1124543

@ashkaps
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ashkaps commented Jul 25, 2020

Is there a slack channel where active user of Winapp Driver contribute and share findings / best practices?

@roizentner
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Is there a slack channel where active user of Winapp Driver contribute and share findings / best practices?

This is actually a great idea! Since I couldn't find such, I've create a Slack workspace:
https://join.slack.com/t/winappdriverworkspace/shared_invite/zt-fxj4sp93-YJeiSrKXuEeB8v7tT7~Www

@DLightstone
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As ideas go creating one more WinAppDriver correspondence space is pretty silly.

Without the source code for WinAppDriver at best it will degenerate into a menu of workarounds for the bugs of WinAppDriver.

At worst it will be a clone of the GitHub correspondence space. A lot of how do I accomplish task X, with no response

@Wolfe1
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Wolfe1 commented Sep 14, 2020

No news but a pull request was merged 4 days ago by @hassanuz ....which just seems to be some support and security readme pages sadly.

@dquist
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dquist commented Sep 15, 2020

That update was made by @DHowett who's a very active developer on WindowsTerminal.

Dustin, could shed some light onto the status of this project? 🙏🙏🙏

@kat-y
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kat-y commented Sep 25, 2020

Hi all! I'm joining Microsoft as a new PM on the WinUI team, working on investigating new controls and WinAppDriver. WinAppDriver is very much alive and I'm excited to be working with @DHowett to bring improvements to it!

I'd like to hear what you want to see in WinAppDriver - free to @ or DM me on twitter or file an issue!

@roizentner
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roizentner commented Sep 25, 2020 •
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@kat-y great news and welcome!
I also invite you to join our Slack workspace (see my previous comment), where some of the more active people have been keeping the conversation going...
[Invitation link]

@RoakyWood
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RoakyWood commented Sep 25, 2020 via email

@dquist
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dquist commented Sep 25, 2020

Hey Kat, glad to finally get some kind of signal from Microsoft.

I'd like to hear what you want to see in WinAppDriver

Rebuilt trust, for starters. I think a lot of us here invested heavily in WinAppDriver because it was hailed as the next great UI testing tool, and then suddenly activity slowed and it was just radio silence for over a year while issues piled up. How are we to put any trust in this project if its going to be at risk of sudden abandonment again?

Specifically, some kind of product roadmap as to planned features as well as what commitment MS is going to put towards this project. Dustin has done superb work on Windows Terminal, but I'm skeptical that a single PM and lone developer can give this project the kind of attention it needs to be taken seriously.

@Wolfe1
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Wolfe1 commented Sep 25, 2020

Hey @kat-y @DHowett

Really glad to see some work being done on this project. I would definitely say start going through the pull requests for some quick wins at least in documentation and example tests. The issues tab needs cleaned up which will be a lot of manual work but in terms of bugs and wanted features a lot of it is out there already.

I think the biggest thing the community wants is for the driver to actually go open source. We want to be able to support the driver while it has Microsoft's interest but have the confidence that we can continue the project if it is left in the dust again.

@pradeipp
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I agree with @dquist, a roadmap up front would help set expectations as well as maybe recommend tweaks depending on the severity of pending issues. Really glad that Microsoft has put some people behind this framework. Way to go team WinAppDriver!

@peterainbow
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Hi all! I'm joining Microsoft as a new PM on the WinUI team, working on investigating new controls and WinAppDriver. WinAppDriver is very much alive and I'm excited to be working with @DHowett to bring improvements to it!

I'd like to hear what you want to see in WinAppDriver - free to @ or DM me on twitter or file an issue!

how about making it open source as with the .net core stuff, even if it had parts that were proprietary, it would make it much easier for us to fix things like the awful performance and difficulties with findings things when they might be children of a app or children of the desktop

@ashkaps
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ashkaps commented Sep 25, 2020

Really great to hear @kat-y and @DHowett .
Much awaited.
Agree with @Wolfe1 . There should be numerous issues for enhancements and fixes already logged, although it would be a time consuming effort to sink all of them in. We have really excited people here who are willing to help and contribute.
The weight is on making WAD completely opensource where community can own and contribute.
What is the stance of MS team?

@DHowett
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DHowett commented Sep 25, 2020

Our stance is that we definitely want to do what we can regarding open-source, but that we have a number of dependencies on private components right now that will be troublesome to disentangle. 😄

@ghost
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ghost commented Sep 26, 2020

Very happy to see that Microsoft has not abandoned the testing community, and would agree with everyone else, open source is the foremost need here to make it a tool we can adopt into our testing toolset with confidence, knowing that it's maintenance is no longer dependent on the whim of the latest MS execs. While there are many core issues that are probably higher priority, I also wish the UI recorder would get some love. With selenium, the browsers offer top notch tooling for exploring the DOM, and experimenting with XPath or CSS Selectors... it'd be nice to have something equally useful for Windows desktop.

@RoakyWood
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RoakyWood commented Sep 26, 2020 via email

@andrisi
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andrisi commented Oct 11, 2020 •
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https://cuketest.gitbooks.io/leanrunner-user-guide-en/content/ - this is a somewhat strange but similar tool from that looks like an advanced Win App Driver, various language integrations... perhaps worth haveing a look, for the Microsoft team too, for motivation. It has the equivalent of Accessability Insight with a way to cache components so it shall be faster, which is a problem with WAD.

@varun210619 varun210619 mentioned this issue Nov 25, 2020
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@ptrthomas
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self-promo here ! considering the recent announcement that WAD development is paused. this is a plug for an open-source tool called "Karate Robot".

this install guide can get you up and running in a few minutes to evaluate: https://github.com/intuit/karate/wiki/Karate-Robot-Windows-Install-Guide

@DHowett
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DHowett commented Dec 9, 2020

That announcement is the opposite of “WinAppDriver is paused.”

@ptrthomas
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ptrthomas commented Dec 9, 2020 •
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@DHowett my bad, thanks for clarifying. I have linked to it in my comment 👍

EDIT many months later:
NARRATOR: It was paused

@onolox
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onolox commented Apr 22, 2022

https://cuketest.gitbooks.io/leanrunner-user-guide-en/content/ - this is a somewhat strange but similar tool from that looks like an advanced Win App Driver, various language integrations... perhaps worth haveing a look, for the Microsoft team too, for motivation. It has the equivalent of Accessability Insight with a way to cache components so it shall be faster, which is a problem with WAD.

I will never trust chinese closed source app on windows.

@jorialand
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Still wondering if WinAppDriver is dead in 2024... 👎

And concerned about how can be the MS's reference tool for testing Windows Apps deprecated/abandoned! 😮

@RoakyWood
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RoakyWood commented Jun 17, 2024 via email

@DLightstone
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DLightstone commented Jun 17, 2024 via email

@RoakyWood
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RoakyWood commented Jun 17, 2024 via email

@DLightstone
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DLightstone commented Jun 18, 2024 via email

@a-einstein a-einstein mentioned this issue Jun 26, 2024
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