1535365 - Add support for extension process.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(GeckoView :: Extensions, enhancement, P2)

Description

[[ex-Mozilla] Agi Sferro | :agi]

Now that we have at least some WebExtension support we should look into running extensions stuff in its own process similar to what desktop does.

Comment 1

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

P2 because an extension process is not a blocker for Fenix MVP.

Comment 2

[[ex-Mozilla] Agi Sferro | :agi]

A lot of the plumbing for this is similar to e10s so I'm going to block this on that.

Comment 3

[[ex-Mozilla] Agi Sferro | :agi]

Mass moving bugs to the Extension component.

Comment 5

[[ex-Mozilla] Agi Sferro | :agi]

Attachment: Bug 1535365 - Enable the extension process.

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/5c3c02b4f8ca
Enable the extension process. r=snorp,aklotz

Comment 8

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/5c3c02b4f8ca

Comment 9

[[ex-Mozilla] Agi Sferro | :agi]

Until Bug 1355239 is fixed we cannot leave this on, since it causes extensions to randomly die.

Comment 10

[[ex-Mozilla] Agi Sferro | :agi]

Attachment: Bug 1535365 - Disable extension process.

We don't currently restart the extension process and this causes extensions to
randomly stop working when Android kills the extension process.

We can re-enable it once Bug 1355239 is fixed.

Comment 11

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/9ba0d3a69fea
Disable extension process. r=snorp,rbarker

Comment 12

[Razvan Maries]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9ba0d3a69fea

Comment 13

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Tracking this bug for Android Fission milestone M2 (pass tests with Fission enabled).

Comment 14

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Extension process doesn't need to block Android Fission.

Comment 15

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The leave-open keyword is there and there is no activity for 6 months.
:agi, maybe it's time to close this bug?

Comment 16

[[ex-Mozilla] Agi Sferro | :agi]

Still relevant.

Comment 17

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

The extension process is not required for Android Fission, but would be nice to have.

Comment 18

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

The extension process is a prerequisite for MV3 support.

Comment 19

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Enhancements should have severity N/A.

Comment 20

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

We should close this bug when we flip the pref by default and ride the trains.

Comment 21

[Chih-Hsuan Yen [:yan12125]]

(In reply to William Durand [:willdurand] from comment #20)

We should close this bug when we flip the pref by default and ride the trains.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1859533 is implemented and verified. This bug can be closed?

Comment 22

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

(In reply to Chih-Hsuan Yen [:yan12125] (UTC+8) from comment #21)

(In reply to William Durand [:willdurand] from comment #20)

We should close this bug when we flip the pref by default and ride the trains.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1859533 is implemented and verified. This bug can be closed?

The preference is currently controlled in Fenix through Nimbus.

The pref still defaults to false at the Gecko/GeckoView layer (in mozilla-central):

• The default is false: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/babdd651feb0febab950eb5257f874632169bb7e/modules/libpref/init/StaticPrefList.yaml#4937-4942
• In Firefox desktop, the default is true by: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/babdd651feb0febab950eb5257f874632169bb7e/browser/app/profile/firefox.js#63
• For the mobile-specific pref to default to true, the default would have to be set to true at: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/babdd651feb0febab950eb5257f874632169bb7e/mobile/android/app/geckoview-prefs.js#264
• For completeness, the pref in Thunderbird defaults to true in https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/5001f444bc9ae5609bb72e1106aebb31cb88644c/mail/app/profile/all-thunderbird.js#758
  • This implies that an alternative way to resolve this bug is to flip the pref to true in StaticPrefList.yaml (and remove the entry from browser/app/profile/firefox.js since it's not needed any more).

Note for completeness: The current rollout only controls Fenix applications. An example of a non-Fenix app in production is Firefox Focus. While it doesn't support third-party add-ons, some internal components are implemented as extensions (webcompat), and enabling out-of-process extensions there may result in unexpected results, especially because so far our primary focus of the out-of-process extension rollout has been Fenix.

Comment 23

[Chih-Hsuan Yen [:yan12125]]

Got it, thank you very much for detailed explanations! Indeed bug 1859533 only flips the default value for the nimbus experiment extensions-process (which controls the config extensions.webextensions.remote [1][2]).

[1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/commit/e59032a7d970167b7b67f7867c50ee87a0659233
[2] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/02841791400cf7cf5760c0cfaf31f5d772624253/mobile/android/geckoview/src/main/java/org/mozilla/geckoview/GeckoRuntimeSettings.java#571

Comment 24

[Arturo Mejia [:amejia]]

Looks like this work is already completed.