624538 - Add a checkbox for enabling the debug mode

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[Tarek Ziadé (:tarek)]

Adding a checkbox for enabling debug mode would be great to set all the good options:

- services.sync.log.appender.debugLog.enabled
- services.sync.log.logger.engine.bookmark

and is future-proof if we need to set other things to enable debug.

Jeff suggested to add a "This change will take effect after restart" warning on checkbox change

Comment 1

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

I think it's a pretty bad idea adding any kind of UI for the logs. This is clearly what about:config is for. If anything we should fix bug 610832.

(In reply to comment #0)
> Adding a checkbox for enabling debug mode would be great to set all the good
> options:
> 
> - services.sync.log.appender.debugLog.enabled
> - services.sync.log.logger.engine.bookmark

These aren't by far "all the good options".

> and is future-proof if we need to set other things to enable debug.

I don't see how something like this would ever be future-proof.

> Jeff suggested to add a "This change will take effect after restart" warning on
> checkbox change

Where would this check box live? This would in all likelihood require new strings and we're trying to be very cautious about that since we've been in string freeze for ages now.

Comment 2

[Tarek Ziadé (:tarek)]

> These aren't by far "all the good options".

Yes that's the point. Setting up all the good options for the proper settings to enable all debug options means 

> I don't see how something like this would ever be future-proof.

Because instead of changing N options that might change in about:config, you just check/uncheck an option.

Comment 3

[Philipp von Weitershausen [:philikon]]

I'm sorry if my initial response was a bit brusque. Let me summarize why this is WONTFIX:

* The UX of logs is terrible. Our logs are scary and contain potentially misleading information if you don't know what's going on. We should not be leading users that way unless they're experiencing problems and we tell them to go there. If we had any kind of UI pointing to logs I think we have failed (for very much the same reason why about:crashes or about:memory aren't linked from primary UI in Firefox either.)

* The idea is meant well for us developers, but in practice it doesn't help us much for reasons I'm outlining below (the kind of log level we need often varies from case to case.)

* We really prefer to fix it by doing bug 610832 and we have WONTFIXed other bugs that suggested we change logging in this or that way in favour of that (see e.g. 617487).


(In reply to comment #2)
> > These aren't by far "all the good options".
> 
> Yes that's the point. Setting up all the good options for the proper settings
> to enable all debug options means

My point is there isn't one set of "all the good options". It varies from bug to bug.

> > I don't see how something like this would ever be future-proof.
> 
> Because instead of changing N options that might change in about:config, you
> just check/uncheck an option.

Well, the problem is that we don't know in advance which engine to ask Trace logs for. Could be bookmarks, could be history, could be passwords. These are pretty sensitive things, too, so having a knob there that dumps your passwords into a text file that we encourage people to attach to bugs is probably not a great idea.