1406313 - console.log from WebExtension experiment and a regular extension are not shown in chronological order

Status: REOPENED

(WebExtensions :: Developer Tools, defect, P3)

Description

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

56.0 (64-bit) Mac OS X

Make a WebExtension experiment and an accompanying text extension with a popup, and then do console.log on both ends when calling experiment API functions.

The entries in the console are not in chronological order. Instead the popup messages come first in a block, and the experiment messages come after in a block.

Unclear if this is devtools bug or WebExtensions bug.

Comment 1

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Experiment APIs are asynchronous. So is the console API. The order in which things run and in which their console messages are processed is completely undefined.

Comment 2

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

The blocks were large enough and separate enough that it appeared as if a longer-than expected delay occurred.

Comment 3

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

I confirmed with devtools that anything sent to console.log should be shown in the order they're received.

On the extension side it should likely be similar, not in discrete chunks from between add-ons.

If the handling on the extension side actually is bad enough that two extensions making console.log calls cannot possibly do it interleaved, then the utility of debugging anything with console.log in extensions has gone.

So maybe something we should look a little closer at.

(In reply to Kris Maglione [:kmag] (long backlog; ping on IRC if you're blocked) from comment #1)
> Experiment APIs are asynchronous. So is the console API. The order in which
> things run and in which their console messages are processed is completely
> undefined.

Not only is your response incorrect (see above, per devtools), it's not a great way to handle a bug report.

This type of response is typical of reports from people who said they had a terrible time contributing to open source.

Comment 4

[Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich)]

I'm going to try and reproduce this, and see if I can get a log that shows the problem more clearly.

Comment 5

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

(In reply to Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich) from comment #2)
> The blocks were large enough and separate enough that it appeared as if a
> longer-than expected delay occurred.

That's about what I'd expect. Though I can't say for sure without seeing an example.

(In reply to Dietrich Ayala (:dietrich) from comment #3)
> I confirmed with devtools that anything sent to console.log should be shown
> in the order they're received.

That's true to some extent, but messages in the browser console come from multiple processes, and they're aggregated asynchronously.