765865 - Allow the webapps registry to be safely shared across multiple concurrent processes

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: DOM: Apps, defect)

Description

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

From bug 738832:

(In reply to Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez] from comment #20)
> We need to make it possible for multiple processes to safely share a single
> registry while continuing to make it possible for B2G to provision new
> profiles.

The particular use case is an active Firefox and native runtime (perhaps of a Marketplace app) both need to reference and modify the webapps registry. Right now because it's cached in memory, changes in one place does not reflect in the other. And there's potential for data loss if both Firefox and the runtime try to modify and save their changes.

Comment 1

[[:fabrice] Fabrice Desré]

I have a longish term goal to move the current file-based storage to indexedDB. I'm not sure if we support concurrent writers to the same db in this context, but that may be worth trying.

Comment 2

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

k9o nomination - this is required to be implemented for marketplace to operate correctly as a web app with installs allowed from the marketplace app and fennec native.

Comment 3

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

I'm confused by what this bug is asking for. Can someone clarify the use case? Is this needed for mobile still? Do we just need to move webapps.sqlite to the profile root dir? Do we want to do that?

Comment 4

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

(In reply to Wesley Johnston (:wesj) from comment #3)
> I'm confused by what this bug is asking for.
Added concurrent to the title to clarify. This bug is for running instances of Firefox and an app, and both want to read and modify the registry.

Comment 5

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Not a blocker to release web runtime on desktop, but it's a want, as fixing this will allow us to have a marketplace app on desktop that works correctly. Flagging for tracking-firefox16.

Comment 6

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

If this doesn't block the feature, no need to track. We'd definitely consider taking an uplift if/when ready, however.

Comment 7

[Jason Smith [:jsmith]]

Talking with Wes, this problem will likely be rate on Android. Possibly less rare on desktop, but still rare.

Comment 9

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

Per bug 1238576, we're going to stop exposing navigator.mozApps on desktop/Android (except where MOZ_B2G is set, such as B2G Desktop), so we won't fix this bug.