1656526 - Implement a very early skeleton UI on Windows behind a registry value

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Alex Thayer [:alexical] (she/her)]

Keeping this platform specific at this point because I don't have as solid an idea of how all this shakes out on other platforms, though I imagine it's rather similar.

Currently, on my reference hardware, a cold startup looks like this:

• Click the Firefox icon on the desktop
• Wait 19 seconds for any visual indication whatsoever that we've launched it
• See a blank window
• Wait for 3 seconds to see the browser chrome show up
• Wait for 8 seconds to see about:home finish loading

That 19 second chunk is far too long, and we can move it earlier by creating a window before prefetching / loading xul.dll (which can take a very long time).

This does leave us with an awkwardly long amount of time staring at a blank white window, which isn't great, but it's likely preferable to nothing. However, even better than this would be if we could use Windows GDI to paint a basic skeleton UI until we can get the real thing up and running.

Comment 1

[Alex Thayer [:alexical] (she/her)]

Attachment: Bug 1656526 - Show blank window prior to loading xul on Windows r?mhowell

Comment 2

[Alex Thayer [:alexical] (she/her)]

Attachment: Bug 1656526 - Draw app skeleton UI r?gijs!,mhowell!

Depends on D86263

Comment 3

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/abdc9c22078c
Show blank window prior to loading xul on Windows r=mhowell
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/b6d3b254ae8c
Draw app skeleton UI r=Gijs,mhowell

Comment 4

[Razvan Maries]

Backed out for build bustages.

Push with failure: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&selectedTaskRun=HpsfSQyyQySMUfrnx21APw.0&resultStatus=testfailed%2Cbusted%2Cexception&revision=b6d3b254ae8ca8c0fa7891f9f6213866cfe1982f

Log: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=313332497&repo=autoland&lineNumber=4728

Backout: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/069bb8bd2356b4d5738e1cec37bf561c24c0f923

Comment 5

[Natalia Csoregi [:nataliaCs]]

Other failures:

• browser/modules/test/browser/browser_TabUnloader.js | Test timed out
• toolkit/xre/test/browser_checkdllblockliststate.js | Windows dll blocklist status should be true, indicating it is running properly. A failure in this test is considered a release blocker
• dom/ipc/tests/JSWindowActor/browser_observer_notification.js | Test timed out
• browser/components/originattributes/test/browser/browser_firstPartyIsolation_saveAs.js | uncaught exception - NS_ERROR_FAILURE: Failure arg 2 [nsIIOService.newChannelFromURI] at NetUtil_newChannel@resource://gre/modules/NetUtil.jsm
• dom/media/test/crashtests/459439-1.html | load failed: timed out after 8 ms waiting for 'load' event for undefined
• and others found here

Comment 6

[Alex Thayer [:alexical] (she/her)]

Attachment: Bug 1656526 - Add resolver_64.cc to asan_blacklist_win.txt r?dmajor

Depends on D86447

Comment 7

[Alex Thayer [:alexical] (she/her)]

Attachment: Bug 1656526 - Update sccache to latest

Depends on D89669

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/88ff36a4bcfb
Show blank window prior to loading xul on Windows r=mhowell
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/6fbb7e7ac121
Draw app skeleton UI r=Gijs,mhowell
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/472b724994eb
Add resolver_64.cc to asan_blacklist_win.txt r=dmajor
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/24648c48a49c
Update sccache to latest r=froydnj

Comment 9

[Dorel Luca [:dluca]]

Backed out 4 changesets (bug 1656526) for Browser-chrome failures in toolkit/xre/test/browser_checkdllblockliststate.js. CLOSED TREE

Log:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=315463574&repo=autoland&lineNumber=7516

Push with failures:
https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&group_state=expanded&revision=24648c48a49cc229f8839d19c22fb2626f767c82

Backout:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/ef7a83cb72a2a145dfc2793ed49065c4a8f0c2b6

Comment 10

[Alex Thayer [:alexical] (she/her)]

Attachment: Bug 1656526 - Lazily load user32 and gdi32 for skeleton UI r?mhowell

We need this because otherwise we load user32, which fails the check in
WindowsDllBlocklist.cpp (line 649). It sounds like this check is non-
negotiable, so this is the only solution I can come up with. Obviously
please let me know if there is some reason we cannot do this, but it
seems to function fine.

Depends on D89670

Comment 11

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/a23009db71c6
Show blank window prior to loading xul on Windows r=mhowell
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/976087837141
Draw app skeleton UI r=Gijs,mhowell
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/ed843dd9af8a
Add resolver_64.cc to asan_blacklist_win.txt r=dmajor
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/9ea0f247d46e
Update sccache to latest r=froydnj
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/2742f1d85634
Lazily load user32 and gdi32 for skeleton UI r=mhowell

Comment 12

[Alexandru Michis [:malexandru]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a23009db71c6
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/976087837141
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/ed843dd9af8a
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9ea0f247d46e
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/2742f1d85634