Making ManimColor an Immutable datatype

[MartinXPN]

Description of bug / unexpected behavior

I'm trying to run manim with Python 3.11 (3.11.6 more specifically). Yet, I get a ValueError telling me that ManimColor class has a mutable default for a field color.

Expected behavior

It should work without errors.

How to reproduce the issue

Code for reproducing the problem

Place the following code in a file main.py

from manim import *

class CreateThumbnail(Scene):
    def construct(self):
        text = Text(
            'Some\nTitle', font_size=77
        ).center().shift(3 * LEFT).shift(2 * UP)
        self.add(text)

Run the following command to compile:

 python -m manim main.py CreateThumbnail -qm -v WARNING

Logs

Terminal output

...
...
    @dataclass
     ^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.6_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/dataclasses.py", line 1230, in dataclass
    return wrap(cls)
           ^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.6_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/dataclasses.py", line 1220, in wrap
    return _process_class(cls, init, repr, eq, order, unsafe_hash,
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.6_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/dataclasses.py", line 958, in _process_class
    cls_fields.append(_get_field(cls, name, type, kw_only))
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.11/3.11.6_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/lib/python3.11/dataclasses.py", line 815, in _get_field
    raise ValueError(f'mutable default {type(f.default)} for field '
ValueError: mutable default <class 'manim.utils.color.core.ManimColor'> for field color is not allowed: use default_factory

System specifications

System Details

• OS macOS 13.3
• RAM: 64GB
• Python version (python/py/python3 --version): 3.11
• Installed modules (provide output from pip list): manim and numpy

FFMPEG

Output of ffmpeg -version:

ffmpeg version 6.0 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers
built with Apple clang version 14.0.3 (clang-1403.0.22.14.1)
configuration: --prefix=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/ffmpeg/6.0_1 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags= --enable-ffplay --enable-gnutls --enable-gpl --enable-libaom --enable-libaribb24 --enable-libbluray --enable-libdav1d --enable-libjxl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-librav1e --enable-librist --enable-librubberband --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsrt --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libtesseract --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvmaf --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-lzma --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-libass --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libspeex --enable-libsoxr --enable-libzmq --enable-libzimg --disable-libjack --disable-indev=jack --enable-videotoolbox --enable-audiotoolbox --enable-neon
libavutil      58.  2.100 / 58.  2.100
libavcodec     60.  3.100 / 60.  3.100
libavformat    60.  3.100 / 60.  3.100
libavdevice    60.  1.100 / 60.  1.100
libavfilter     9.  3.100 /  9.  3.100
libswscale      7.  1.100 /  7.  1.100
libswresample   4. 10.100 /  4. 10.100
libpostproc    57.  1.100 / 57.  1.100

[MartinXPN]

I was wondering if it would be possible to make the colors inside manim immutable?
Otherwise, it's not possible to use them in dataclasses as default values.

[MSameerAbbas]

Weird. Just installed python 3.11.6 and installed manim and numpy in a fresh venv. FFMPEG version's also the same. Ran your code and everything rendered fine. Try a pip install -U manim and see if that fixes it.

[MartinXPN]

Sorry for the confusion. Seems like my provided code was not complete.
Here is the complete example:

from manim import *
from dataclasses import dataclass


@dataclass
class Array:
    values: list[int | None]
    color: str = WHITE       # <- This causes an issue because Python now requires the default values to be non-mutable

class CreateThumbnail(Scene):
    def construct(self):
        text = Text(
            'Some\nTitle', font_size=77
        ).center().shift(3 * LEFT).shift(2 * UP)
        self.add(text)
    # ...

[MSameerAbbas]

How does this work as a solution?

from manim import *
from dataclasses import dataclass
from typing import ClassVar


@dataclass
class Array:
    values: list[int | None]
    color: ClassVar[ManimColor] = WHITE       # <- No longer raises a ValueError

class CreateThumbnail(Scene):
    def construct(self):
        text = Text(
            'Some\nTitle', font_size=77
        ).center().shift(3 * LEFT).shift(2 * UP)
        self.add(text)
    # ...```

[MartinXPN]

It doesn't. What if we need several different arrays? This should be an instance variable.

[behackl]

color: str = WHITE

If you want to store it as a str, then the workaround would be to do so explicity: color: str = WHITE.to_hex().

Making ManimColor immutable is an interesting thought though. CC @MrDiver

[MartinXPN]

I would be happy to store it as another type as well.
The problem is that it's currently mutable. So, the only way to have it in a dataclass is to have it with field(default_factory=lambda: WHITE). Which is not ideal especially when the colors can actually be immutable.

[MrDiver]

I mean i kind of wrote it immutable so there shouldn't be methods that change the color in place if i didn't miss anything, so what would be the thing that signifies it's immutable?

[MartinXPN]

Maybe making ManimColor a frozen dataclass might help?
Currently, the colors are of type ManimColor, which is a class; therefore, the values of all the colors are mutable.