747167 - HttpFox extension leaks many content compartments while running

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: General, defect)

Description

[Wladimir Palant]

Just noticed that my Firefox has grown to 1 GB even though I restarted it yesterday. Turned out that I left HttpFox running and forgot about it. As a result I got tons of leaked content compartments.

Steps to reproduce:

* Install HttpFox 0.8.10 from https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/httpfox/.
* After browser restart click the HttpFox icon in the toolbar, click "Start" in the HttpFox bottombar and close it.
* Open http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/central/ in a new tab and close the tab again.
* Check about:compartments

Expected results:

about:compartments doesn't show http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/central/ as an active compartment.

Actual results:

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/central/ shows up under "User Compartments" and "Ghost Windows". Opening HttpFox bottombar and clearing the entries allows the compartments to be released. Not sure why some sites leak while others don't.

Unfortunately, it is very easy to forget that HttpFox is running. A while ago I argued that it should stop collecting data when its bottombar is closed (http://code.google.com/p/httpfox/issues/detail?id=78) but nothing happened. But even if it keeps collecting data, there is no reason why it should leak compartments.

Comment 1

[Nicholas Nethercote [inactive]]

HttpFox has 107,000 users according to AMO.

Comment 2

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

The developer has been contacted through AMO.

Comment 3

[asgerklasker]

Attachment: Patch that fixes some memory leaks

There are two rather trivial bugs that prevent the important cleanup code from running. I've attached a patch that fixes them. I can't find the author's email address, so I'm posting it here.

Comment 4

[Andrew Williamson [:eviljeff]]

Developer chased via info request.  I've mentioned the patches contributed and warned that we will downgrade if they don't make an effort to address the leak.

Comment 5

[Martin Theimer]

thanks for the patch. new version 0.8.11 was just uploaded and is waiting to be reviewed.