933720 - Make it possible to pass a remote host to the --jsdebugger commandline flag

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools :: Debugger, defect, P3)

Description

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

bug 895471 added a --jsdebugger commandline argument, which starts the browser debugger using resource:///modules/devtools/DebuggerProcess.jsm which is in browser/

This doesn't work for any other toolkit apps until all code moves to /devtools and the UI is compatible to non-Firefox apps.

Until we get there, I think it would be a good idea to allow connecting to a remote instance using this flag as an argument instead. Example:

# Starts the browser debugger
firefox --jsdebugger 

# Starts the debugger ui, but makes a remote connection to host:port
firefox --jsdebugger localhost:6030

# Optional: Starts the debugger ui and uses a unix socket to connect
firefox --jsdebugger /path/to/socket.file

If Firefox is already running, it should still open the debugger. This will allow me to make it even easier for the user to access remote debugging capabilities for Thunderbird.

Fixing this should be fairly easy using nsICommandLine's extra features.

Comment 1

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

I've solved this by employing the same tactics as the browser debugger, copying over the prefs.js file to an empty profile and then starting Firefox with that profile.

I'm therefore closing this bug WONTFIX, if you see any value in implementing this anyway please reopen.