534020 - OOPP: Expose plugin memory/CPU usage in the add-on manager

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Benjamin Smedberg]

With OOPP we will have the ability to monitor the amount of CPU/RAM that the plugin process is using. Although I'm not a UI designer, I think that we could expose this fairly simply in the add-on manager plugins pane. If users choose to disable the plugin, we should make sure that the process we're currently using for it is killed off.

jboriss, can you do UI mockups for this? We're targeting this work at 3.6.x/3.7, so we need a design targeting the old plugin UI as well as the new one.

Comment 1

[[not reading bugmail]]

Couldn't we just update about:memory?

Comment 2

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

Attachment: mockup of listing add-ons by "badness" score - here as percentage of cpu/ram

(In reply to comment #0)
> With OOPP we will have the ability to monitor the amount of CPU/RAM that the
> plugin process is using. 

I agree - this would be very beneficial in the extension manager.  The kind of questions it could be great to answer are "which of my extensions can I disable to be less laggy?"  "How expensive performance-wise is this add-on?"  

So, how can we express how "harmful" something is, in terms of CPU/RAM?  Even non-technical users are often familiar with file size when window managing - there's a single number (e.g. 14mb) that makes sense in the context of other scores.  It's easy to say one file is bigger than another.  Can we do the same in add-ons, with (what smedberg called in IRC) a single badness score?

For instance, could we show what percentage of the current RAM/CPU firefox is using?

Comment 3

[Kyle Huey (Exited; not receiving bugmail, old account, do not use)]

Speaking from a Windows perspective, and only for plugins (not extensions), once plugins run in separate processes we should be able to get CPU and RAM usage for each process (including the parent process) and calculate what percentage of the total any given plugin is using for CPU and RAM.  You could come up with some metric for converting CPU + RAM percentage to a "badness score" (obviously a plugin isn't going to use 100% of CPU + RAM ever)

Comment 4

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Note that this bug is explicitly only about plugins, not extensions.

Comment 5

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Speaking from a Windows perspective, and only for plugins (not extensions),
> once plugins run in separate processes we should be able to get CPU and RAM
> usage for each process (including the parent process) and calculate what
> percentage of the total any given plugin is using for CPU and RAM. 

Sweet!  Is there something along the same lines that could be done for extensions?

Comment 7

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Sweet!  Is there something along the same lines that could be done for
> extensions?

See bug 621607. We should move the discussion about extensions over there.

Comment 8

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Comment on attachment 427380 [details]
mockup of listing add-ons by "badness" score - here as percentage of cpu/ram

Obsoleting mockup because it is for extensions.

Comment 9

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.