1588839 - SpecialPowers.spawn (and potentially other SpecialPowers APIs?) like to throw "OperationError: The operation failed for an operation-specific reason" which is unhelpful for narrowing down what's actually going wrong

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Testing :: Mochitest, defect, P2)

Description

[:Gijs (he/him)]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=%22OperationError%3A%20The%20operation%20failed%20for%20an%20operation-specific%20reason%22&list_id=14942157

This is confusing both for local debugging and for the intermittents that are being filed for this error that then obscure what the actual error is. Causes I've seen so far include:

• passing broken arguments (e.g. null as the 'args' parameter)
• errors in the execution of the spawned task (e.g. ReferenceError when referencing functions that don't exist, attempting to access properties on things that are null, etc.)

Comment 1

[Andrew McCreight [:mccr8]]

Kris, did you have some bug on file for this already?

Comment 2

[Andrew McCreight [:mccr8]]

I'm marking this as blocking Fission mochitests because it makes fixing them way more annoying.

Comment 3

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

No, but I've been working on it.

Comment 4

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Attachment: Bug 1588839 - Part 0 - Add js::IsSavedFrame helper. r=jimb

This is necessary for sanity checking values sent from content processes
before using them with APIs which require SavedFrame objects.

Comment 5

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Attachment: Bug 1588839 - Part 1 - Add helper to allow structured cloning Error/Exception objects. r=bzbarsky

In order to be able to reasonably debug error results from things like
JSWindowActor.sendQuery, we need to be able to clone errors across process
boundaries, so that they can be propagated to the caller that initiated a
query. The standard for the structured clone algorithm does not allow cloning
errors directly, so this patch instead adds a chrome-only wrapper object which
supports structured clone writing, and on reading, automatically decodes to
the error object it wraps. Callers who wish to clone an Error or Exception
object simply need to wrap it in a ClonedErrorHolder before sending.

Comment 6

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Attachment: Bug 1588839 - Part 2: Return the actual rejection value when a sendQuery handler rejects. r=bzbarsky

Comment 7

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Attachment: Bug 1588839 - Part 3: Preserve cross-process async stacks in sendQuery/sendAsyncMessage calls. r=bzbarsky

This makes it much simpler to track down the source of message handler errors
by linking the cross-process caller chains which sent the problematic message.

Comment 8

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

The priority flag is not set for this bug.
:ahal, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/2f8b5b48c896
Part 0 - Add js::IsSavedFrame helper. r=jimb
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/65cc1910918c
Part 1 - Add helper to allow structured cloning Error/Exception objects. r=bzbarsky
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/cde41501372a
Part 2: Return the actual rejection value when a sendQuery handler rejects. r=bzbarsky
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/7cfcd0f5da4f
Part 3: Preserve cross-process async stacks in sendQuery/sendAsyncMessage calls. r=bzbarsky

Comment 11

[Andrei Ciure[:aciure]]

Backed out 4 changesets (bug 1588839) for causing JSWindowActor.cpp failures

push that caused the backout: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&selectedJob=280136038&resultStatus=testfailed%2Cbusted%2Cexception%2Cretry%2Cusercancel%2Crunnable&revision=7cfcd0f5da4f6b01c93697f5d212fe3db679df89

backout: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8a2f3dae304dbf22bf8305dfaaf7db75a8a5aba9

Comment 12

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/df371f905d3a
Part 0 - Add js::IsSavedFrame helper. r=jimb
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/e4783542b7c8
Part 1 - Add helper to allow structured cloning Error/Exception objects. r=bzbarsky
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/c51a9a372a81
Part 2: Return the actual rejection value when a sendQuery handler rejects. r=bzbarsky
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/aa4e0207b45f
Part 3: Preserve cross-process async stacks in sendQuery/sendAsyncMessage calls. r=bzbarsky

Comment 13

[Cristina Coroiu [:ccoroiu]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/df371f905d3a
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/e4783542b7c8
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/c51a9a372a81
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/aa4e0207b45f