1490334 - Switch consumers of nsSearchService to use async API's

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1492475

(Firefox :: Search, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

So we can remove the sync init path, switch the API calls (mostly get*) to be async

(keeping note of https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/internal/XPIProvider.jsm#178, which we could, but probably dont want to use)

Comment 1

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Florian has some thoughts here.

Comment 2

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Mike Kaply [:mkaply] from comment #1)
> Florian has some thoughts here.

Yeah, I probably have lots of thoughts, as I remember discussing related topics with both you and Mike de Boer, but it would be easier to answer a more specific question.

Now that legacy add-ons are out of the picture, the most obvious remaining user of the sync init that I can think of is the user entering a word in the urlbar and pressing enter very quickly after startup (same applies to the searchbar, but it's not visible by default anymore). Passing a search term from the command line (ie. from another application or the operating system) is likely another one, but I suspect it's less common (although I haven't looked at data to back this claim).

Somehow we'll probably want to make introduce a way to initialize the search service that's halfway between the current async init and the current sync init, ie. we would do the I/O asynchronously, but not wait for the results of network requests. I think bug 1492475 is going in this direction already.

Comment 3

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

Was splitting these out, but this work is being done in 1492475