863830 - Run all plugins OOP by default in 32-bit mode (i386/x86)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

The possibility of doing this came up at bug 853387, which concerns a buggy plugin crashing the browser when run in-process.

We never found a way to run plugins out-of-process that used the NPAPI Carbon event model or the QuickDraw drawing model.  Furthermore all plugins that used one or both of these models needed to run in 32-bit mode.

We've since dropped support for the QuickDraw drawing model (in FF 18) and the Carbon event model (in FF 19).  Before we did so we defaulted to running in-process in 32-bit mode, and made exceptions for plugins that we knew worked properly running out-of-process.  We also semi-automatically restarted the browser in 32-bit mode when someone tried to load a plugin that required the Carbon event model in 64-bit mode.

Now we've dropped support for both of these models, and have already removed support for restarting in 32-bit mode.  So we should consider reversing the OOP defaults for 32-bit mode -- we should consider making plugins run OOP by default in 32-bit mode, as they already do in 64-bit mode.

We don't currently know of any 32-bit plugins that don't require Carbon or QuickDraw and need to run in-process.  But there are undoubtedly many plugins out there that we *don't* (yet) know about.

As a first step, let's make all plugins run OOP in 32-bit mode, without exceptions, and see what happens.  This should happen first on trunk, and should graduate to other branches as part of the normal, 6 week release cycle.  In other words, the progress of this change onto the branches shouldn't be accelerated.

If we find any 32-bit plugins that need to run in-process, we can consider making exceptions for them.

Comment 1

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Attachment: Make all plugins run OOP (by default) on the Mac in 32-bit mode

Comment 2

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

Comment on attachment 739755 [details] [diff] [review]
Make all plugins run OOP (by default) on the Mac in 32-bit mode

This was copied from attachment 729061 [details] [diff] [review] at bug 853386, written by Benjamin Smedberg.

Comment 3

[Steven Michaud [:smichaud] (Retired)]

The patch for this was (mistakenly) landed at bug 853387 comment #50.