62097 - nsLoggingService thread safe

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: XPCOM, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Rick Marvin]

There's no way to currently have logging services and use xpcom in a
separate thread.

Currently the nsLoggingService::gLoggingService is initialized even before
XPCOM is started. When I attempt to NS_InitXPCOM in a child thread,
nsLoggingService asserts as the owning thread is not the current thread.

At first glance, this may seem logical, however, let me explain what I am
after, and then you might have a better understanding of the situation.

I desire to use the Necko engine as my network engine.  The network traffic
is secondary to the application, and it should all run in the background (on
a child thread simply retrieving urls on an interval basis).  Because the
necko engine uses other services which are not thread safe (namely the
nsCategoryManager and nsAppFileLocationProvider) I must initialize XPCOM
within the same thread that I intend to perform the necko operations.  That 
means starting up XPCOM in the child thread.  With the limitation that 
nsLoggingService starts up in the main thread, there is no way to use logging 
services while running XPCOM in a child thread.

In addition, there is no environment variable hooked up in the build process to 
turn off logging.  Currently, one can only disable logging if the makefile is 
edited to add NS_DISABLE_LOGGING and NO_BUILD_REFCNT_LOGGING

Comment 1

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW and adding RFE

Comment 2

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

taking some of the bugs that I have been working on from scc.

Comment 3

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Does this bug still mean anything? I can find nsLoggingService or
gLoggingService anywhere in LXR...