616396 - Geolocation in extension: watched position is updated not frequently enough, and with large timeout extension waits for update indefinitely, with smaller timeout is says "Timeout" after eight-thirteen updates of position

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Extension Compatibility, defect)

Description

[Wikiwide]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/9.0.597.0 Safari/534.13
Build Identifier: 

Testing on Fremanlte (Maemo 5) two different version of Fennec:
1. 4.0b2 (beta), GTK based;
2. 4.0b3pre 20101202, Qt based.

Both of them exhibit the same behavior, show the same problem.

Fennec is started, extension page is opened, it starts watching position, the GPS chip of N900 is turned on, then GPS lock occurs, the extension receives several updates (about five-eight-ten-thirteen updates) and then no updates are given.

If the timeout is small (~30s), it says "Timeout!".
If the timeout is huge (~1 day), it says nothing, just tries my patience.

It seems that the part of Geolocation which is responsible for providing updates every time location is changed gives the updates with increasing pauses between them. That would explain why first updates do arrive while later a timeout error is given.

At the same time, background GPS monitor (location-test-gui) gives GPS updates much more frequently, at least every second.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install the extension.
2. Open the page: chrome://gpscompassdial/content/GCD.xul
3. Wait and watch. It requests GPS at startup, and at each GPS update is displays an alert with text "0".
Actual Results:  
After some alerts, depending on timeout set in GCD.js, the page either silently stops giving updates and alerts, or says "Timeout!" and stops GPS request.

Expected Results:  
Continuous (at least every second) flood of updates/alerts, and no timeout. There is no reason for timeout.

Attaching the latest extension file here. It will says "Timeout!" after several alerts.

Comment 1

[Wikiwide]

Attachment: The extension

Comment 2

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

can you reproduce this problem using web content?  If you call watchPosition() with the same options from a webpage, do you see this problem?

Comment 3

[Wikiwide]

Yes,
http://www.thedotproduct.org/experiments/geo/
Also gives
Timeout
after several successful readings.
Times between readings in one test:
8s
10s
4s
4s
4s
19s
Timeout!

Comment 4

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

wikiwide, are you able to try a patch if I put one together?

Comment 5

[Wikiwide]

What is a patch? I mean, in what way are you offering me to try it?

I can install a deb, that's easy. That's the regular way: download a deb to hard drive and install it.

I can put files manually into needed folders, even if I need to do it as root. I know how to use command line.

I can even try to compile something from source code, but I'm not an expert in it. At all.

Could you give me a deb of patched Fennec, if it isn't too difficult?

Is

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-maemo5-qt/fennec_4.0~b3~20101203005455_armel.deb

already patched? I'm going to try it.

Comment 6

[Wikiwide]

I have tried this version of Fennec
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/nightly/latest-mozilla-central-maemo5-qt/fennec_4.0~b3~20101203005455_armel.deb

two times. The website, after several readings, gives Timeout.

Then I tried the extension with huge Timeout. It seems to have bursts of update, like:
one update - three minutes - two or three updates - nine minutes - one update - ten minutes - one update - three minutes - two updates - two minutes - two updates - two minutes - three updates - four minutes - one update - one minute - three updates - six minutes - one update.

Where can I find the patch and how do I install it?

Just tell me how I can help you to resolve the bug, and I'll try to.

Comment 7

[Wikiwide]

Still (nightly 2010-12-07), the webpage gives timeout after, say, four successful readings.
Where is a patch/fix?

Comment 8

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

we recently pushed a related change.  would you mind taking a look at a new build and trying it out?

Comment 9

[Camelia Urian]

Wikiwide can you still reproduce this? Please try latest build available at: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/mobile/releases/7.0b5/

Comment 10

[Adrian Tamas (:AdrianT)]

There was no update by the author of the bug in a several months. Closing the issue as incomplete.