1157531 - Remove remote debugging settings UI in favor of using system settings

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Settings and Preferences, defect)

Description

[:Margaret Leibovic]

This is a spin-off from bug 1154504. See comments 5-8 in that bug.

mhaigh, what's the bug you're using to track updating our settings?

Comment 1

[:Margaret Leibovic]

jryans, do you know what we would need to do to fix this bug? Is it a matter of listening for some Android setting to enable our remote devtools? Or is it just that would we just always enable them, but then we could only accept a connection if USB debugging is enabled anyway?

In bug 1154504, you mention that we've made some memory improvements with our remote devtools, but I don't think we would want to take any memory regression for something that most users aren't going to use, so I think we would want this to act like it's disabled if the user doesn't have USB debugging enabled.

Comment 2

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

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #1)
> jryans, do you know what we would need to do to fix this bug? Is it a matter
> of listening for some Android setting to enable our remote devtools? Or is
> it just that would we just always enable them, but then we could only accept
> a connection if USB debugging is enabled anyway?
> 
> In bug 1154504, you mention that we've made some memory improvements with
> our remote devtools, but I don't think we would want to take any memory
> regression for something that most users aren't going to use, so I think we
> would want this to act like it's disabled if the user doesn't have USB
> debugging enabled.

I think we should first try:

1. Listen for Android's USB debugging, enable DevTools if this is enabled

This way, there is no memory impact unless USB debugging is enabled.  However, we may conclude that the memory is still too high for just USB debugging users (since developers likely leave this on all the time).  So, the next (more complex) change we can make is:

2. When USB debugging is on, start only a port listener, not the entire DevTools server

This should drop memory usage down to about as small as we can make it while still be able to connect.

I don't really know how #1 should be done, as I am not sure how you watch for such an Android change (...or even if you can at all).  But, assuming we do #1 and memory usage shows #2 is needed as well, I can help with #2.

Comment 3

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

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #1)
> so I think we
> would want this to act like it's disabled if the user doesn't have USB
> debugging enabled.

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (use ni?) from comment #2)
> 1. Listen for Android's USB debugging, enable DevTools if this is enabled
>
> 2. When USB debugging is on, start only a port listener, not the entire
> DevTools server
> 
> This should drop memory usage down to about as small as we can make it while
> still be able to connect.
> 
> I don't really know how #1 should be done, as I am not sure how you watch
> for such an Android change (...or even if you can at all).  But, assuming we
> do #1 and memory usage shows #2 is needed as well, I can help with #2.

These both sound good to me! *chimes out*

Comment 4

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

+1 because I tend to forget that I need to enable debugging inside Firefox too..

Comment 5

[Martyn Haigh (:mhaigh)]

The code to work out if we're in USB debugging mode on the device should be:

boolean isDebuggable =  ( 0 != ( getApplicationInfo().flags &= ApplicationInfo.FLAG_DEBUGGABLE ) );

Comment 6

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

(In reply to Martyn Haigh (:mhaigh) from comment #5)
> The code to work out if we're in USB debugging mode on the device should be:
> 
> boolean isDebuggable =  ( 0 != ( getApplicationInfo().flags &=
> ApplicationInfo.FLAG_DEBUGGABLE ) );

How do you figure? From the documentation, I understood that this is if android:debuggable is enabled in the APK (which might correspond to our debug vs. opt builds).

I found http://stackoverflow.com/a/12676235 which states:

 int adb = Settings.Secure.getInt(context.getContentResolver(), Settings.Secure.ADB_ENABLED, 0);

(though there's an solution for > 17, where ^ gets deprecated in 17)

Comment 7

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

In bug 1180996, I recently added WiFi debugging for Fennec, which adds a new WiFi specific option to this settings menu.

So, I think removing the entire "Remote Debugging" settings panel would be harder to do now.

The WiFi debugging option is not based on ADB, so probing the ADB state is not helpful for that case.  There is not really any Android system level option to base the state of WiFi debugging on, I don't think, so at least that option seems like it would need to stay in the Fennec settings UI.

In any case, we could still automate the debugging via USB setting as described in other comments here.

Comment 8

[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.