551815 - Add the notion of "unsafe" objects to SDK glossary and documentation

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Add-on SDK Graveyard :: Documentation, defect)

Description

[Atul Varma [:atul]]

In bug 547417 comment 5, adw makes a good point about the fact that some jetpack-core modules, such as byte-streams.js and observer-service.js, are partly just "helpers" for actual LLJAPI modules, and thus their code sometimes takes or returns objects that are actually native Gecko objects.

Communication with such objects doesn't necessarily guarantee LLJAPI behavior: for instance, observer-service may pass a callback a subject that is a raw nsIDOMWindow, which the client could attach an event listener too, and if the client fails to explicitly remove the listener before being unloaded, a memory leak will be created.

We should figure out what to call these objects and document any APIs that expose them accordingly.

Comment 1

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Noelle: is this something you could take on?

Comment 2

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Given that no one is working on this, it seems unlikely to make 0.3.  Retargeting to future until we can triage to a specific milestone.

Comment 3

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

The Add-on SDK is no longer a Mozilla Labs experiment and has become a big enough project to warrant its own Bugzilla product, so the "Add-on SDK" product has been created for it, and I am moving its bugs to that product.

To filter bugmail related to this change, filter on the word "looptid".

Comment 4

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Given that api-utils is now labeled "internal" as a whole, it seems unnecessary to warn folks about the particular differences in behavior of its modules.