1078959 - WebIDE should use its own process

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools Graveyard :: WebIDE, defect)

Description

[Paul Rouget [:paul]]

If WebIDE uses its own process (and .app on osx):

Pro:
- we won't have to restart Firefox if there's a bug in WebIDE (happens too often to me)
- we can have our own menu on Mac
- we can have our own icon
- easier to switch between WebIDE and other apps (won't be considered as a Firefox window)

Cons:
- opening a web page might be tricky (we want it to open in the other Firefox process)
- using a different process is easy, making this process look like a different app on osx might be difficult
- it will be necessary to migrate addons from Firefox' profile to WebIDE's profile

Comment 1

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

(In reply to Paul Rouget [:paul] (slow to respond. Ping me on IRC) from comment #0)
> If WebIDE uses its own process (and .app on osx):
> 
> Pro:
> - we won't have to restart Firefox if there's a bug in WebIDE (happens too
> often to me)

I think the better approach to this is just finding and fixing the bugs!  You'll still have them in a separate app anyway.  It's just slightly less annoying to restart is all.

> - we can have our own menu on Mac

The current menu switching on Mac does get a bit strange, yes.

> - we can have our own icon
> - easier to switch between WebIDE and other apps (won't be considered as a
> Firefox window)

For both of these, I would like to hear more about whether this actually seems important to people.

> Cons:
> - opening a web page might be tricky (we want it to open in the other
> Firefox process)

This worries me a lot.  Down the road, we should really offer a way to work on regular websites too (bug 1077784), and probably you'd want to see that in a tab to work on it.

If you have to use a separate Firefox process to view a tab, but it's not open at the time, then we have to launch Firefox first (and maybe resume your session with 100 tabs...)?

I think it is critical to figure out what "opening a web page" looks like if we want to pursue this.

> - using a different process is easy, making this process look like a
> different app on osx might be difficult

There's some non-zero amount of work, yes.

> - it will be necessary to migrate addons from Firefox' profile to WebIDE's
> profile

Yeah.  We could copy the add-ons maybe.

At the moment, I am not convinced this is the right path to take.  The gains we would get in pro column don't seem big enough compared to the amount of work involved here.  But perhaps I am too biased by what we have today. :)

I imagine test infrastructure would require some / many changes to run our tests against the separate app.  Watching the amount of work it's taking to change to Mulet is quite depressing.  This is not a reason to base decisions on though, just trying to state that this may involve quite a lot of work.

Comment 2

[Paul Rouget [:paul]]

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] from comment #1)
> > - we can have our own icon
> > - easier to switch between WebIDE and other apps (won't be considered as a
> > Firefox window)
> 
> For both of these, I would like to hear more about whether this actually
> seems important to people.

I was looking at Sole using WebIDE. On Mac, getting back to WebIDE after you used your editor is difficult as WebIDE's window is "part" of Firefox' windows.

> > Cons:
> > - opening a web page might be tricky (we want it to open in the other
> > Firefox process)
> 
> This worries me a lot.  Down the road, we should really offer a way to work
> on regular websites too (bug 1077784), and probably you'd want to see that
> in a tab to work on it.
> 
> If you have to use a separate Firefox process to view a tab, but it's not
> open at the time, then we have to launch Firefox first (and maybe resume
> your session with 100 tabs...)?
> 
> I think it is critical to figure out what "opening a web page" looks like if
> we want to pursue this.


Agreed. And I don't see any technical blocker, no matter what we want to do here.

> At the moment, I am not convinced this is the right path to take.  The gains
> we would get in pro column don't seem big enough compared to the amount of
> work involved here.  But perhaps I am too biased by what we have today. :)
> 
> I imagine test infrastructure would require some / many changes to run our
> tests against the separate app.  Watching the amount of work it's taking to
> change to Mulet is quite depressing.  This is not a reason to base decisions
> on though, just trying to state that this may involve quite a lot of work.

Alright. I filed this bug to start the discussion. Not saying we should do that now.
We'll talk more.

Comment 3

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

Several Mozillians on Twitter argued for something like a separate app, as that would improve window / app management gymnastics:

https://twitter.com/dietrich/status/532787724252479488

Comment 4

[Alexandre Poirot [:ochameau]]

Also, I received some feedback about mulet:
  Why isn't it promoted as a standalone app with its own package, name, icon and all?
  Will it be released for each b2g version, with channels?
  Will it be auto-updated?

There is a clear friction between mulet and simulator addons.
One is an addon, the other is a standalone application.
I'm wondering if this new application we are just releasing is an opportunity for WebIDE to jump in it and be just completely outside of Firefox.
I'm having hard time right now figuring out how we can communicate about mulet and simulators at the same time, where mulet is best suited for gaia developers, whereas simulators are best for app developers.

As I see mulet today, it doesn't promote WebIDE. It just opens gaia with regular webpage devtools,
but that doesn't has to be just that.

Otherwise, I'm not sure launching WebIDE in another process will help much the multiple window management...
The only way to fix that is the run/see simulator in the same window than tools/webide.

Comment 5

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

+1 to what Paul said above about watching Sole use WebIDE. It's a constant papercut because it means that the development workflow is a cycling between:

* Browser window of Firefox app (for api docs, etc)
* WebIDE window of Firefox app
* Simulator app
* Vim (or whatever)

Now that I run WebIDE as a separate process, the pain is a bit lessened. Ideally, Simulator and WebIDE would be docked side-by-side in same process.

Comment 6

[Soledad Penades [:sole] [:spenades]]

Hey I didn't know I was setting an example haha

We just had this discussion in #london:

11:53 wilsonpage> sole: Why isn't webide in a its own tab?
11:53 sole> wilsonpage: LONG STORY
11:53 wilsonpage> sole: I've been using it for months and it causes me non-stop pain
11:53 sole> it essentially produces a lot of bugs
11:53 sole> wilsonpage: I think they want to make it its own process
11:54 sole> So you can cmd+tab
11:54 sole> instead of CMD+~
11:54 wilsonpage> sole: I need a way to easily flip between Firefox, Sublime and WebIDE
11:54 sole> see above :D
11:54 wilsonpage> sole: That would be great

So you can watch Wilson use WebIDE too, no need to only watch me :-P

Comment 7

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

WebIDE is slated for removal (bug 1314811), so there are no plans to add to the current set of features.