1330638 - (ss-feature) [meta] Sessionstore feature development

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, task)

Description

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

We set three tiers that we’ll use to theme and prioritize sessionstore component work:

Tier 1: Reliability
Tier 2: Performance
Tier 3: Feature development and maintenance

The scope of Tier 3 is basically ‘anything not relatable to reliability or performance’. There’s one important feature that we’d like to see happen early next year:
1. Have ‘browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand’ default to FALSE on at least OS X. This is blocked by performance work (see bug 1330635).

Bugs which have 'new feature' as its main theme will be marked blocking this bug.

Comment 1

[Dave Yingling]

As a firefox user, I was surprised to get an email update regarding bug 372650. For years now I've assumed you guys have abandoned this bug for whatever reason. So, it's great to get some sort of update on it.

I'm assuming bug 372650 is a Tier 1: Reliability bug, because the tabs and windows don't "reliably" get reopened into the correct virtual desktop on X in Linux, and other OSes too. I'm hoping it doesn't get classified as a "Tier 3: Feature development and maintenance" bug as this is the only firefox bug that I've ever bumped into while using it, and it happens on every restart so reproducing it shouldn't be hard.

The new feature you mention, "1. Have ‘browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand’ default to FALSE on at least OS X. This is blocked by performance work (see bug 1330635)." This change will affect everyone who upgrades to whatever version of firefox has had this change made automatically with no user intervention at all? Right? I'm asking, because I usually have hundreds of tabs open (sometimes 500, 600, or 700+ before I cull/bookmark them), and having firefox actually download them all on every restart is not something I want it to do. I know improved performace will make 50 or 100 tabs not such a big deal, but 700+ will be unusable, and 200 or 300 probably will be too.

Is it possible to add a new internal firefox setting something like, "browser.sessionstore.restore_max_tabs". This setting would also be a new default, and would cause firefox to act like restore_on_demand is true if the user's session has more tabs in it than restore_max_tabs. This would prevent firefox from trying to load massive sessions all at once such as sessions with more than 100 tabs and definitely 700+. This will save bandwidth, and prevent large sessions from using gigs and gigs of ram. I only have 4gigs, and large sessions can cause firefox to thrash destroying performance, and forcing me to xkill it and then start it up again. However, since restore_on_demand went default this hasn't been much of an issue.

Comment 2

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

(In reply to Dave Yingling from comment #1)
> I'm assuming bug 372650 is a Tier 1: Reliability bug, because the tabs and
> windows don't "reliably" get reopened into the correct virtual desktop on X
> in Linux, and other OSes too. I'm hoping it doesn't get classified as a
> "Tier 3: Feature development and maintenance" bug as this is the only
> firefox bug that I've ever bumped into while using it, and it happens on
> every restart so reproducing it shouldn't be hard.

Thanks for checking back in ;-) I pushed it into the the feature development bucket, because it's a feature we don't currently support. All windows & tabs _are_ restored, just not in the right place. Thus, not a reliability issue.

For other comments, please reply to bug 372650 directly, since this bug is a non-actionable tracking bug.

We will take your other comment in consideration once we start working on this feature. Don't worry, we won't ship something unusable here.

Comment 3

[Robert AB]

The list of APIs needed by session managers (3 ready, 4 unassigned):
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1378647  (unassigned)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1378651  (unassigned)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1381922  (unassigned)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1413525  (unassigned)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1284886  (fixed FF57)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322485  (fixed FF58)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322060  (fixed FF57)

I am not sure if there are more related bugs.


Additional links:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=14762057#p14762057
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=14772668#p14772668
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=14777435#p14777435
https://www.mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26384

https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager/issues

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6lcq7r/session_manager_dev_says_session_manager/
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7dxmu4/why_firefox_had_to_kill_your_favorite_extension/dqsbz0u/

Comment 4

[Robert AB]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427007

Comment 5

[Robert AB]

Meta-bug for session managers:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1427928

Comment 6

[Robert AB]

Meta-bug similar to Sessionstore feature development:  Bug 450886 (also about future development)

Other related meta-bugs:  Bug 1330633, Bug 1330635

Comment 7

[Robert AB]

In my opinion, the most important bugs existing under this meta-bug (Tracking/Depends on): 
Bug 1298912
Bug 590448
Bug 845820
Bug 591957
Bug 1301041
Bug 1421673
These bugs probably should be introduced together.

Summary:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1298912#c14