1044867 - (HeadlessGecko) Allow Gecko to be run as a headless service.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Chris Kitching [:ckitching]]

If we were to restructure the app to be a client of an independent, headless, Gecko service, it would give us a few useful features:

Possibility for the expensive Gecko to survive the killing of Fennec, improving subsequent startup times.
Ability to do all the nice things described in Stage 3 of Bug 1044791.
Ability to add pages to the reading list and *store them locally for offline reading* without needing to actually visit the page (ie. "All the nice things I wish for in Bug 1044781).
Less tight coupling of components (and all the various hand-wavy benefits that gives, notably simplification of some sorts of tests).

Downsides:

It's obscenely complicated.
It's quite difficult.
Did I mention it's obscenely complicated?


... Intern project, anyone?

Comment 1

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

This would be useful as a V2 improvement that allows users to "preview" what content they've "added to reading list"/ their loading queue (as per our conversations and my lovely sketch Martyn and Margaret :).

That initial stage refinement work is being tracked in bug 1107293

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.