1754924 - Removing nonPersistentCookies option from the privacy.websites.cookieConfig API

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Hannah Peuckmann]

We are currently in the process of deprecating and removing the network.cookie.lifetimePolicy pref. The value of this pref is controlled by the "Clear cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" checkbox in the privacy UI. This checkbox will instead be controlling the according prefs of the checkbox "Clear history when Firefox closes" from the history category in the privacy UI. These prefs are privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown, as well as privacy.clearOnShutdown.cookies, -.cache, -.offlineApps. These prefs will trigger the same data clearing behaviour on shutdown as the network.cookie.lifetimePolicy did. Currently, we are looking through the code for places where the network.cookie.lifetimePolicy is used. We were wondering whether the network.cookie.lifetimePolicy code here can just be removed, or if it needs to be replaced with the sanitizeOnShutdown prefs.

Comment 1

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

Let's check the actual usage of the "privacy" permission + nonPersistentCookies substring before taking next steps.

If the API is not used at all, then we can easily deprecate/remove it.
If it is used, then we need to be a bit more considerate, and either remap the nonPersistentCookies option to the new prefs, or introduce more granular options.

Comment 2

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

(In reply to Rob Wu [:robwu] from comment #1)

Let's check the actual usage of the "privacy" permission + nonPersistentCookies substring before taking next steps.

If the API is not used at all, then we can easily deprecate/remove it.
If it is used, then we need to be a bit more considerate, and either remap the nonPersistentCookies option to the new prefs, or introduce more granular options.

We only ran a search for nonPersistentCookies and that returned 57 add-ons. All but 17 add-ons have 0 users. 9/17 add-ons have less than 7 users. The top add-on reported in the list is a false positive, they aren't using nonPersistentCookies at all. There is also at least 1 other false positive.

That brings the list to 6 add-ons. I will get in touch with the developers of these add-ons.

Comment 3

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Attachment: Bug 1754924 - Deprecate nonPersistentCookies option from the privacy.websites.cookieConfig API. r?mixedpuppy!

Comment 4

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

We decided to deprecate the API property instead of removing it (which is what the patch I attached is about). We won't necessarily contact the developers because there is no action needed.

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/6737f9cfa232
Deprecate nonPersistentCookies option from the privacy.websites.cookieConfig API. r=mixedpuppy

Comment 6

[Narcis Beleuzu [:NarcisB]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6737f9cfa232

Comment 7

[Richard Bloor]

Changes are ready for review:

• content
• BCD

Comment 8

[William Durand [:willdurand]]

Thanks, I r+ed your content PR but I still cannot review PRs on this repo.. That looks good to me anyway (the BCD PR looks sane, too) :)