1778270 - Outdated content in "Debugging Firefox for Android with WebIDE"

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(DevTools :: Documentation, defect)

Description

[Justin Peter]

The page about debugging Firefox for Android (linked in the url field) is severely outdated in several aspects; several parts are done much differently now (often on different pages), and the screenshots reflect a very old version of Firefox.

The most egregious issues (which are probably also the most easily fixed):

• The page never actually says what WebIDE is (and presumably it's superseded by about:debugging?)
• There should be a link to https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/about_colon_debugging/index.html at some point
• The section "ADB Helper" does not appear to reflect current Firefox; this appears to be the equivalent of the "Enable USB Devices" button in about:debugging
• "Connecting" should also reflect that this is now in about:debugging

From my experience (as a moderately technical user, but honestly most people who want to debug Firefox for Android probably are) the steps I found necessary were basically:

• Enable USB debugging in Android
• Enable USB debugging in Firefox
• Go to about:debugging and enable USB devices
• Refresh and connect

(I did install ADB on my computer previously for unrelated reasons; I'm not sure if I would have needed to install anything else if I had not.)

Comment 1

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

(In reply to Justin Peter from comment #0)

The page about debugging Firefox for Android (linked in the url field) is severely outdated in several aspects; several parts are done much differently now (often on different pages), and the screenshots reflect a very old version of Firefox.

The most egregious issues (which are probably also the most easily fixed):

• The page never actually says what WebIDE is (and presumably it's superseded by about:debugging?)
• There should be a link to https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/about_colon_debugging/index.html at some point
• The section "ADB Helper" does not appear to reflect current Firefox; this appears to be the equivalent of the "Enable USB Devices" button in about:debugging
• "Connecting" should also reflect that this is now in about:debugging

From my experience (as a moderately technical user, but honestly most people who want to debug Firefox for Android probably are) the steps I found necessary were basically:

• Enable USB debugging in Android
• Enable USB debugging in Firefox
• Go to about:debugging and enable USB devices
• Refresh and connect

(I did install ADB on my computer previously for unrelated reasons; I'm not sure if I would have needed to install anything else if I had not.)

Thanks for filing. The instructions for remote connection should be covered at https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/about_colon_debugging/index.html#connecting-to-a-remote-device and this old page should be deleted.

Can you share how you accessed it initially, was it linked from anywhere?

Comment 2

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

Attachment: Bug 1778270 - [devtools] Remove outdated WebIDE documentation

Comment 3

[Justin Peter]

I just found it by searching how to remotely debug Firefox for Android (I don't remember if it was Google or DDG); I thought it was also linked from somewhere else in the docs, but looking now I can't find any links to it (and the page that look most similar to what I recall hasn't been modified for months at least) so my memory may be faulty there.

Three other things I noticed while poking around today (sorry to throw them here, I can open new bugs if you want but figure they're somewhat trivial):

• https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/remote_debugging/firefox_for_android/index.html is for even older versions of Firefox and should also perhaps be removed, if that's the solution you're going with (although that page clearly denotes which versions it is associated with, unlike the webide one).

• https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/devtools/docs/user/index.rst#l214 appears to have a typo of "color" instead of "colon"; if this is intended to link to a specific section (I'm not particularly familiar with how your docs are set up) then perhaps "Connecting to a remote device" is a better section to link to than "Connecting over the Network".

• It might be slightly more clear if the about:debugging doc page mentions Firefox for Android in the introductory paragraph.

Comment 4

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

Thanks for the additional info! I'll be removing the whole remote_debugging folder, AFAICT it's fully outdated.
I incorporated the rest of your feedback in the current patch, thanks!

Comment 5

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/e0e46af8668f
[devtools] Remove outdated WebIDE documentation r=nchevobbe

Comment 6

[Sandor Molnar[:smolnar]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/e0e46af8668f