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Older addons that work fine with multiprocess
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trlkly
Oct 5, 2016, 4:37:52 AM10/5/16
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Many addons that work perfectly fine in multi-process Firefox have no active developers. What is the plan for handling these addons? I don't think users that use older addons that still work on multiprocess Firefox should be restricted to a single process because of it. And forcing on e10s is not recommended.
These are not a small proportion of addons. I'd say half to three quarters of my addons (which I made sure work in multi-process) no longer have active developers. Disabling those addons isn't a good solution either. Some have working replacements either on AMO or the Chrome Store, but most don't.
The solution of having other people update the addons and then host them anew doesn't seem to be a viable one--not with the large number of addons. It's not only hard on people getting them, and hard on reviewers who have to review tons of addons that have already been reviewed, but hard on users who have to go install tons of new addons and possibly reset a bunch of settings.
Of course, you can't just let any addon still work, as there are also quite a few that do break with multi-process. The only options I see are to let users mark an addon as working in multiprocess or to create some sort of automated test that can see if multi-process unsafe features are used. Both would involve then autoflagging those addons on AMO.
The latter seems preferable to me. Any false negatives (such as addons that use unsafe features but don't depend on them for their primary function) could get rehosted, or, if possible, have their ownership transferred, so that upgrades would be automatic.
I think it is important that Firefox breaks as few addons as it can at any one time, lest people decide to keep older versions that still worked as they wanted. Or, since the change burden is high, use that time to try out a new browser.
These are not a small proportion of addons. I'd say half to three quarters of my addons (which I made sure work in multi-process) no longer have active developers. Disabling those addons isn't a good solution either. Some have working replacements either on AMO or the Chrome Store, but most don't.
The solution of having other people update the addons and then host them anew doesn't seem to be a viable one--not with the large number of addons. It's not only hard on people getting them, and hard on reviewers who have to review tons of addons that have already been reviewed, but hard on users who have to go install tons of new addons and possibly reset a bunch of settings.
Of course, you can't just let any addon still work, as there are also quite a few that do break with multi-process. The only options I see are to let users mark an addon as working in multiprocess or to create some sort of automated test that can see if multi-process unsafe features are used. Both would involve then autoflagging those addons on AMO.
The latter seems preferable to me. Any false negatives (such as addons that use unsafe features but don't depend on them for their primary function) could get rehosted, or, if possible, have their ownership transferred, so that upgrades would be automatic.
I think it is important that Firefox breaks as few addons as it can at any one time, lest people decide to keep older versions that still worked as they wanted. Or, since the change burden is high, use that time to try out a new browser.
Jorge Villalobos
Oct 5, 2016, 10:33:42 AM10/5/16
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to e10s. A future step will enable all add-ons that aren't explicitly
incompatible, with e10s on, and it will be up to us in the Add-ons Team
to flag the incompatible ones.
Jorge
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