Posted on Blink-dev previously.
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/PnULXkdIRqU
So I've been trying to resolve a couple of issues(unrelated to each other) I have with devtools.
- M42 Head commit dependency (404 Resource not found)
- In M42, lastchange.py was updated to look at the head commit in third_party/Webkit to update LASTCHANGE.blink with the blink revision.
- On non git-svn projects where the top commit won't necessarily have a valid git-svn-id, the script puts the full commit hash into LASTCHANGE.blink. The url this generates is an invalid devtools url. like (serve_rev/@{fullCommitHashHere}/devtools.html)
- As a work around I've updated lastchange.py to do what it used to before(Why was this changed?), i.e, grep the entire git log in Webkit for a git-svn-id. This way it uses the first valid commit it finds.
- I feel as if this scenario was not anticipated. Custom commits being on top in Webkit on m42 and beyond will end up with broken devtools (chrome://inspect specifically).
- Devtools urls not being hosted consistently (White screens because "JS error- DevToolssHost is not defined and "source*.css/js/html files are not being served)
- Sometimes, even with a valid devtools url, devtools can be broken if the serve_rev isn't hosting all the files.
- Example urls - working and broken - Note the different ids in the url and the Js console error on the broken url.
- Further inspection of both urls (F12->sources) shows that all the backend files are being served but the frontend(source*) css/html/js files are not. So we're stuck with a white page.
- Is this normal? Why are some revisions not being hosted correctly? What am I expected to do besides disabling dynamic LASTCHANGE.blink population?
After the discussion on Blink Dev, it appears that for issue 2 - There might be a bug in the the chrome devtools front end appspot server for revision@187429. (JS error - DevToolsHost is not defined causes a white screen). Is it possible for devs to fix the files hosted at that revision or should I be updating to a different one?
As for Issue 1 - I think this might an unforeseen issue caused by updates to the way lastchange.py works and thought I should bring it to your attention.
Finally, what is the expected lifetime of a revision? Does every revision stay alive "forever" or are older revisions deprecated after a branch is complete?