typing: Classes that inherit Generic[...] indirectly aren't considered generic.

[JohnLennon]

BPO	38459
Nosy	@gvanrossum, @ilevkivskyi

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2019-10-13.10:43:13.496>
created_at = <Date 2019-10-13.08:31:23.929>
labels = ['3.7', 'invalid', 'type-bug', 'library']
title = "typing: Classes that inherit `Generic[...]` indirectly aren't considered generic."
updated_at = <Date 2019-10-13.10:43:13.489>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/JohnLennon'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2019-10-13.10:43:13.489>
actor = 'levkivskyi'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2019-10-13.10:43:13.496>
closer = 'levkivskyi'
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2019-10-13.08:31:23.929>
creator = 'John Lennon'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 38459
keywords = []
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['354568', '354569', '354570', '354572']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['gvanrossum', 'levkivskyi', 'John Lennon']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue38459'
versions = ['Python 3.7']

[JohnLennon]

Given the file example.py with the following contents:

from typing import Generic, TypeVar

KT = TypeVar("KT")
VT = TypeVar("VT")


class GenericMapping(Generic[KT, VT]):
    pass


class SomeImplMapping(GenericMapping):
    pass


a: GenericMapping[int, float]
b: SomeImplMapping[int, float]

I would expect SomeImplMapping to be generic as well as GenericMapping. However, currently this code fails with the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "adt.py", line 18, in <module>
    b: SomeImplMapping[int, float]
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/typing.py", line 254, in inner
    return func(*args, **kwds)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/typing.py", line 841, in __class_getitem__
    _check_generic(cls, params)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/typing.py", line 204, in _check_generic
    raise TypeError(f"{cls} is not a generic class")
TypeError: <class '__main__.SomeImplMapping'> is not a generic class

If I understand everything correctly, that's because typing doesn't check bases of the class to have __parameters__ attribute:

https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Lib/typing.py#L210

I did not found the restriction that only direct childs of Generic[..] class can be generic in the docs, so I think this is a bug.

[JohnLennon]

However, if I change the signature to:

class SomeImplMapping(GenericMapping[KT, VT]):

Everything works just fine. And that's not really clear for me: we already have declared the generic types, we can not change the amount of those arguments, so why do we have to pass the same generic parameters again?

And even if that's the designed way to do things, I would expect the first example to fail not because of the type substitution, but for deriving the GenericMapping without generic type arguments provided (as if I'll try to derive Generic instead of Generic[...]).

[JohnLennon]

BTW I don't mind creating a PR for that issue if there will be an agreement on what is the desired behavior here.

[ilevkivskyi]

The docs for typing module are clear about this:

Using a generic class without specifying type parameters assumes Any for each position.

There is also an example involving a base class.