Closed Bug 1532782 Opened 5 years ago Closed 7 months ago

We probably don't need plugin-container anymore on (non-MacOS) Unix

Categories

(Core :: IPC, enhancement, P2)

enhancement

Tracking

()

RESOLVED FIXED
119 Branch
Tracking Status
firefox119 --- fixed

People

(Reporter: jld, Assigned: jld)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

Attachments

(2 files)

On non-Mac Unix, we're still using the plugin-container executable (instead of the firefox executable) for plugins ( both NPAPI and GMP). My understanding is that there are historical reasons why this was needed on Windows (something to do with third-party DLL injection?), but I'm not aware of anything like that for Unix.

Specifically, for the fork server (bug 1470591), all processes launched through it will have the same executable, and while it would be possible to exempt plugins and launch them normally, that would be wasting memory and time (and adding extra code and special cases) for no known purpose. And then if we stop using plugin-container, there's no reason to continue shipping it.

(We do need plugin-container on Mac, and we launch all child processes through it, because it has a flag set in its bundle metadata that makes the UI not show it in, e.g., the Dock.)

The one wrinkle here is that xpcshell doesn't have the -contentproc feature to launch itself as the child process. So we'd need anything that actually uses xpcshell in a build artifact (xpcshell tests? comm-central?) to also include plugin-container, but not on Win/Mac where it's already included.

See Also: → 1529390
Summary: We probably don't need plugin-container anymore on Unix → We probably don't need plugin-container anymore on (non-MacOS) Unix
Assignee: nobody → jld
Priority: -- → P2
Severity: normal → S3
Blocks: forkserver
See Also: → 1805788

On the topic of xpcshell, we don't include it in Firefox packages, so we should be able to drop plugin-container from the installer manifest (after changing GeckoChildProcessHost to not use it) but continue to build it.

I'm going to land the two patches in separate pushes in case of regressions.

Keywords: leave-open
Pushed by jedavis@mozilla.com:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/65081d68166d
Stop using plugin-container on regular Unix. r=nika
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/73754e0b48ef
1805788: apply code formatting via Lando
Pushed by jedavis@mozilla.com:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/785477ac8d1d
Stop packaging plugin-container (but continue to use it for xpcshell tests). r=nika,firefox-build-system-reviewers,glandium
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 months ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Target Milestone: --- → 119 Branch
See Also: → 1854079
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