802679 - give background blocklist and addon checker transactions low network priority

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

I hope to make channel priorities a more useful attribute in necko so I'm cleaning up the priority some resource requests are classified with.

the blocklist and versioncheck-bg processes run in the background but are executed with a default priority.

Neither of these changes will have an immediate impact because current prioritization only happens among resources with the same hostname; this is about better meta data to allow experimentation/measurement with other approaches. Specifically to evaluate the impact of pausing background tasks like this while high priority UI-related activity is being retrieved (stylesheets, js html, etc..)

Comment 1

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

Attachment: patch 0

Comment 2

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Comment on attachment 672375 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 0

Let's get Blair to review this since he works on this code much more than I do as of late.

Comment 3

[Blair McBride [:Unfocused] (UNAVAILABLE)]

Comment on attachment 672375 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 0

Review of attachment 672375 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Firstly: Cool :)

::: toolkit/mozapps/extensions/AddonUpdateChecker.jsm
@@ +421,5 @@
>      this.request.addEventListener("load", function(event) { self.onLoad() }, false);
>      this.request.addEventListener("error", function(event) { self.onError() }, false);
> +    var priorityChannel = this.request.channel.QueryInterface(Ci.nsISupportsPriority);
> +    if (priorityChannel)
> +      priorityChannel.adjustPriority(Ci.nsISupportsPriority.PRIORITY_LOWEST);

This will lower the priority for all add-on update checks - including manual checks, which should stay as normal priority.

To do this only for background update checks, check for UPDATE_WHEN_PERIODIC_UPDATE in aReason here:
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/b08ec0a01619/toolkit/mozapps/extensions/XPIProvider.jsm#l5311

AddonUpdateChecker.jsm is ignorant when it comes to the flags, so add a boolean param to AddonUpdateChecker.checkForUpdates() and UpdateParser() solely to signify that it's a background check.

Comment 4

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

blair, thanks - that's excellent advice.

Comment 5

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.