Xoatlicue

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Proposed Litmus Database Schema

I had proposed this change to the guys who run the litmus site. They had not responded, as they are in the middle of other changes. The other changes are, I think, orthogonal to these suggestions. I wanted to capture this suggestion before I lost it.

I think that this is the current structure (as I have reverse-engineered it) of the Litmus database.

I am proposing this, which I think will be much more flexible and will scale better in the long run. I am seeing a few slight errors, such as that there should be "0+" resources associated with a test, not "1+". But I think this is mostly correct.

The Category entity and its self-link allows a flexible categorization of the tests, but also allows a heirarchical categorization at the same time. The Resource entity would allow us to capture, for example, a URL as one resource of a "go to site of URL" test. Then associating 100 URLs with that test would be more flexible than creating 100 tests of the form "go to URL A", "go to URL B", etc. The Config entity would capture the type of machine and the versions of what is being run. This would be more flexible than, for example, creating a one version of test for Firefox 1.5, then a separate copy of the test for FireFox, then a separate copy of the test for Firefox 3, and so on.

If anyone has suggestions, please let me know.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Slides from Mozilla OnSite Preso

They are here: http://66.16.208.213/mozilla/OnSite2007Preso/Intro.html

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

A Random Attempt at Specifying Firefox UI

Correction: 2007/04/07 - This is why I like specs. I get things wrong at times. I was switching back and forth between FF and TB and wrote down the wrong menu headers. I am fixing the Firefox menu headers for Mac OS X. Thanks for the notes about this in the comments. This will be the last edit here. This document will be moved. Back to the original post....

I was telling people that this should be done, so I decided to put my feet into the dance. There is a lot of good stuff written in various blog entries and on wikis scattered hither and yon that describe various aspects of the UI of Gecko apps, such as Firefox. I mentioned that these could be brought together into some sort of specification that could be used to help people who are trying to test the product, document the product, develop for the product, or just plain understand it.

I borrowed a picture from Alex Faaborg, something I really wish I had seen in my first month at MoCo, when I was writing things in bugs that sounded like "that thing that does that stuff, next to that other thing, I do not think it is working...". Yeah. That went really well.

It is going to be difficult for one person to be comprehensive. I wanted to illustrate, though, an approach that can be taken. So, I have tried to describe the empty first page. I ended up also describing the "Quick Find" box. I think people know that command-F brings up Find, from the menu, but how many people know that the '/' key brings up the Quick Find bar instead? People remember vi, yes? Of course, they do. Very intuitive. :-)

So, here goes.

Firefox - A Browser

Of course, one does not always see these UI elements all at once. This will help more if it actually describes the state the browser is in at the time one sees this UI. While we're here, how did we get here? That is the big picture. But there are other pictures.

The first image above is the first page one sees on a Mac OS X system running Firefox 2.0.0.3 and the second is the same Firefox release on Ubuntu Linux 6.10. Obviously, there are differences between all the platforms.

- There is no Menu Bar in the window on Mac OS X. The menu bar for a Mac OS X application is at the top of the system window. The top-level menus are different.
* Mac top menus: File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools, Window, Help
* Windows top menus: ???
* Mac top menus: File, Edit, View, History, Bookmarks, Tools, Help

- The Navigation Toolbar appears to be the same. Add-ons may place other icons in the Navigation Toolbar.

- In the Windows picture, there is a square box to the right of the Menu Bar. This is the "Busy Searching Spinner".

- The Mac has a "Busy Searching Spinner" on the right of the Search Bar. It spins when one is searching. It stays motionless while one is not searching.

- The Bookmarks Toolbar is the same.

- The Tabstrip is the same, except that the icons are different.

- The Content Area is the same. By default, the Content Area is blank. Firefix may be configured to open a page at launch. To see a blank Content Area, type "about:blank" in the Location Bar.

- The Sidebar is the same. It is only made visible under certain conditions. By default the browser history is made visible in the Sidebar when one types the 'History Sidebar Key'. Typing key again makes the History sidebar appear. Typing this key again makes it disappear.
* Mac - 'History Sidebar Key' = command-shift-h
* Windows - 'History Sidebar Key' = ???
* Linux - 'History Sidebar Key' = control-h

- The Status Bar is the same.

- The Find Bar is the same. Typing 'Find Key' makes the Find Bar visible below the Content Area and Sidebar.
* Mac: 'Find Key' = command-f
* Windows: 'Find Key' = ???
* Linux: 'Find Key' = control-f

- There is also a Quick Find Bar that replaces the Find Bar.

Quick Find Bar:

The Quick Find Bar in a browser window on Mac OS X is shown below.

If the Content Area is not blank, typing the '/' key makes the Quick Find Bar visible below the Content Area and Sidebar. There is also an issue with the default keyboard focus. For example, bring up the page shown below and type the '/' character. The Quick Find Bar will not appear because the default keyboard focus is on the search form field. One must click somewhere else on the page to take the keyboard focus away from the form field. When there is no form field accepting keyboard focus, then typing the '/' key brings up the Quick Find Bar.

If the Content Area is blank, typing the '/' key has no effect. The Quick Find Bar disappears after approximately 4 seconds if nothing is typed.

If one types a character, it is put into the 'Quick Find' field. If there is text on the page matching the text in the Quick Find text field, then the first instance of that text on the page is selected. If the selected text is part of a link, the URL for that link is displayed in the Status Bar and if one types a return key or an enter key, then that link is activated. If one types text which does not appear on the page, the background of the Quick Find text field turns red. If another character is typed and the action does not place a text string which is found on the page into the Quick Find text field, there is an audible "beep".

For example, if one navigates to the page above and types a '/' character and then a 'xxx', the result is two audible beeps and the page below.

If one does not hit return and stops typing, the Quick FInd Bar and the text typed in disappears. If one hits the '/' key again, the Quick Find Bar appears again, but the text field is empty and the previously typed text is lost.

Still To Be Done

Absolutely everything else.

Friday, March 02, 2007

Cranking on the Test Engine

I recently "finished" an inventory of the testing tools and test suites available here at Mozilla. I put quotes around the word "finished" because, of course, it is not done. In a sense, it never will be. What I have done is that really turned one crank on an engine. Hopefully, the engine will be started.

I view this as an engine because there is a cycle that needs to occur. (I may actually have my engine terminolgy wrong here. I do not actually know engines as anything other than an abstraction. Apologies in advance.) Also, I am not an artist. I do words, not pictures.

Spark - identify and ignite existing tests. This will lead to...

Combustion - tests are executed and results recorded.

There has been a lot of random firing in the past. There are a bunch of tests. But when people look to run tests, their choice of tests has been close to random. I believe this to be so because if one wanted to pick tests by another method, there is no way to do so. There is no information available to provide any other criteria. There is a very rough correspondence between modules and tests, but modules are amorphously defined and the results are usually passed on in the form of a message that "I ran tests in X and they worked." Not very specific.

Right now, combustion is starting to happen. Litmus tests get executed and there is information at the end that can be pointed to. There are suites of reftests and mochitests scripts that are being run after a build and reported in tinderbox. But there are a lot of tests that are not in these harnesses yet. There are a lot of tests that are hard to analyze and hard to understand. It is hard to tell how useful they are.

Expansion - results of testing are analyzed.

It is usually in this stage that a determination is made about whether something can be shipped, or if the quality of the product is deemed good enough for some purpose. This stage involves an evaluation about what the testing meant. This leads to the next stage.

Compression - functionality is identified for which new tests are needed.

Did the testing that was done test the features that we care about? Usually, enough testing is done so that we are confident of the new features and of drastically changed functionality. But we all know there are side-effects and side-effects to side-effects and I do not think anybody feels we are testing as much of the functionality as we should. Thinking about what new tests are needed pushes the piston back down to a firing position.

Injection - define more tests of the functionality.

And then this brings us back to Spark.

I suggest this could be thought of as a cycle, and a cycle that needs to continue to go around. It is not something to do until we are "done".

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Investigating NSPR Logging

There are a lot of tests written in C++ and there are a lot of different ways that they log their results. Among the strings that one finds are ": PASS", "INFO PASS", "tests passed.", "... OK", and so on. And that is only for the successful runs of the tests.

I am investigating the use of the PR_LOG call defined in http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/nsprpub/pr/include/prlog.h.

It turns out that you can turn on logging in modules that take advantage of the NSPR function but setting an environment variable. So, if I want to see the log output from a test, I can do:

$ cd dist/bin
$ NSPR_LOG_MODULES=all:5 ./TestCookie 2>&1 | grep -v WARNING

At this point, there is a lot of output. I can also do:

$ cd dist/bin
$ NSPR_LOG_MODULES=all:0 ./TestCookie 2>&1 | grep -v WARNING

These numbers are from prlog.h. I found this in a post about troubleshooting mail. Or rather, Tomcat found it.

PR_LOG_NONE = 0, /* nothing */
PR_LOG_ALWAYS = 1, /* always printed */
PR_LOG_ERROR = 2, /* error messages */
PR_LOG_WARNING = 3, /* warning messages */
PR_LOG_DEBUG = 4, /* debug messages */

So, 5 means "I want everything" and 0 means "please, be quiet". But there is still a lot of output when I use "all:0" above.

It turns out that this test is using printf. I do not even want to do a search for the number of cpp files we have using printf. I am sure there are a gazillion of them.

When you register with the logger, you have to give your module a name. This is an interesting list.


"Autodial" - netwerk/base/src/nsAutodialWin.cpp
"BMPDecoder" - modules/libpr0n/decoders/bmp/nsBMPDecoder.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"BayesianFilter" - mailnews/extensions/bayesian-spam-filter/src/nsBayesianFilter.cpp
"DOMLeak" - dom/src/base/nsGlobalWindow.cpp
"DeviceContextSpecGTK" - widget/src/gtk2/nsDeviceContextSpecG.cpp
"DeviceContextSpecQt" - gfx/src/qt/nsDeviceContextSpecQt.cpp
"DeviceContextSpecXlib" - gfx/src/xlib/nsDeviceContextSpecXlib.cpp
"DeviceContextXlib" - gfx/src/xlib/nsDeviceContextXlib.cpp
"DocLoader" - uriloader/base/nsDocLoader.cpp
"DocumentLeak" - content/base/src/nsDocument.cpp
"DrawingSurfaceXlib" - gfx/src/xlib/nsDrawingSurfaceXlib.cpp
"FontMetricsGTK" - gfx/src/gtk/nsFontMetricsGTK.cpp
"FontMetricsPS" - gfx/src/ps/nsFontMetricsPS.cpp
"FontMetricsXlib" - gfx/src/xlib/nsFontMetricsXlib.cpp
"GC" - nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/prmsgc.c:
"HelperAppService" - uriloader/exthandler/nsExternalHelperAppService.cpp
"IMAP" - mailnews/imap/src/nsImapProtocol.cpp
"IMAP" - mailnews/imap/src/nsImapProtocol.cpp
"IMAPOFFLINE" - mailnews/db/msgdb/src/nsMailDatabase.cpp
"IMAPOFFLINE" - mailnews/db/msgdb/src/nsMailDatabase.cpp
"IMAPOFFLINE" - mailnews/db/msgdb/src/nsMsgOfflineImapOperation.cpp
"IMPORT" - mailnews/import/comm4x/src/nsComm4xMailImport.cpp
"IMPORT" - mailnews/import/eudora/src/nsEudoraImport.cpp
"IMPORT" - mailnews/import/oexpress/nsOEImport.cpp
"IMPORT" - mailnews/import/outlook/src/nsOutlookImport.cpp
"IMPORT" - mailnews/import/src/nsImportMail.cpp
"IMPORT" - mailnews/import/src/nsImportService.cpp
"IMPORT" - mailnews/import/text/src/nsTextImport.cpp
"ImageXlib" - gfx/src/xlib/nsImageXlib.cpp
"InMemoryDataSource" - rdf/base/src/nsInMemoryDataSource.cpp
"JPEGDecoder" - modules/libpr0n/decoders/jpeg/nsJPEGDecoder.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"JSComponentLoader" - js/src/xpconnect/loader/mozJSComponentLoader.cpp
"JSDiagnostics" - dom/src/base/nsJSEnvironment.cpp
"LoadGroup" - netwerk/base/src/nsLoadGroup.cpp
"MAILBOX" - mailnews/local/src/nsMailboxProtocol.cpp
"MAPI" - mailnews/mapi/mapihook/src/msgMapiImp.cpp
"MCD" - extensions/pref/autoconfig/src/nsReadConfig.cpp
"MIME" - mailnews/mime/emitters/src/nsMimeBaseEmitter.cpp
"Mai" - accessible/src/atk/nsMai.h:
"Movemail" - mailnews/local/src/nsMovemailService.cpp
"MsgBiff" - mailnews/base/src/nsMsgBiffManager.cpp
"MsgPurge" - mailnews/base/src/nsMsgPurgeService.cpp
"NNTP" - mailnews/news/src/nsNNTPProtocol.cpp
"NNTP" - mailnews/news/src/nsNNTPProtocol.cpp
"NNTP" - mailnews/news/src/nsNNTPProtocol.cpp
"NNTP" - mailnews/news/src/nsNNTPProtocol.cpp
"NSJAVA" - modules/oji/src/nsJVMManager.cpp
"NTLM" - security/manager/ssl/src/nsNTLMAuthModule.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"ObserverService" - xpcom/ds/nsObserverService.cpp
"PALMSYNC" - mailnews/extensions/palmsync/src/PalmSyncImp.cpp
"PNGDecoder" - modules/libpr0n/decoders/png/nsPNGDecoder.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"POP3" - mailnews/local/src/nsPop3Protocol.cpp
"PangoFont" - gfx/src/gtk/nsFontMetricsPango.cpp
"PhGfxLog" - gfx/src/photon/nsRenderingContextPh.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"PresShell" - layout/base/nsPresShell.cpp
"QtGfx" - gfx/src/qt/nsGfxFactoryQt.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"RDF" - rdf/base/src/nsCompositeDataSource.cpp
"RenderingContextXlib" - gfx/src/xlib/nsRenderingContextXlib.cpp
"RenderingContextXp" - gfx/src/xprint/nsRenderingContextXp.cpp
"SMTP" - mailnews/compose/src/nsSmtpProtocol.cpp
"SOCKS" - netwerk/socket/base/nsSOCKSIOLayer.cpp
"StaticComponentLoader" - xpcom/components/nsStaticComponentLoader.cpp
"Syspref" - extensions/pref/system-pref/src/gconf/nsSystemPrefService.cpp
"Syspref" - extensions/pref/system-pref/src/nsSystemPref.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestBlockingSocket.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestCookie.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestIOThreads.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestProtocols.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestServ.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestSocketTransport.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestStreamChannel.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestStreamLoader.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestStreamPump.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestStreamTransport.cpp
"Test" - netwerk/test/TestUpload.cpp
"Test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/anonfm.c:
"Test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/instrumt.c:
"Test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/mbcs.c:
"Test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/nameshm1.c:
"Test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/ntioto.c:
"Test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/op_excl.c:
"Test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/randseed.c:
"Test" - xpcom/proxy/tests/proxytests.cpp
"TestCase" - security/nss/cmd/selfserv/selfserv.c:
"TestSocketIO" - netwerk/test/TestOverlappedIO.cpp
"TestSocketIO" - netwerk/test/TestSocketIO.cpp
"URILoader" - uriloader/base/nsURILoader.cpp
"UrlClassifierDbService" - toolkit/components/url-classifier/src/nsUrlClassifierDBService.cpp
"UrlClassifierStreamUpdater" - toolkit/components/url-classifier/src/nsUrlClassifierStreamUpdater.cpp
"Widget" - widget/src/gtk2/nsAppShell.cpp
"WidgetDraw" - widget/src/gtk2/nsAppShell.cpp
"WidgetFocus" - widget/src/gtk2/nsAppShell.cpp
"WidgetIM" - widget/src/gtk2/nsAppShell.cpp
"XRemoteClient" - widget/src/xremoteclient/XRemoteClient.cpp
"XftFontLoad" - gfx/src/gtk/nsFontMetricsXft.cpp
"XlibScrolling" - widget/src/xlib/nsWidget.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"XlibWidgets" - widget/src/xlib/nsWidget.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"cache" - netwerk/cache/src/nsCache.cpp
"canvasGLES11" - extensions/canvas3d/src/nsCanvasRenderingContextGLES11.cpp
"clock" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"cltsrv_log" - nsprpub/pr/tests/cltsrv.c:
"cltsrv_log" - nsprpub/pr/tests/provider.c:
"cmon" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"cookie" - netwerk/cookie/src/nsCookieService.cpp
"counters" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prcountr.c:
"cvar" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"expatdriver" - parser/htmlparser/src/nsExpatDriver.cpp
"frame" - layout/generic/nsFrame.cpp
"frameverifytree" - layout/generic/nsFrame.cpp
"gc" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"gizmo" - nsprpub/pr/include/prlog.h:**
"gnomevfs" - extensions/gnomevfs/nsGnomeVFSProtocolHandler.cpp
"htmlcontentsink" - content/html/document/src/nsHTMLContentSink.cpp
"imgRequest" - modules/libpr0n/src/imgRequest.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"io" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"ldap" - directory/xpcom/base/src/nsLDAPProtocolModule.cpp
"ldapautocomplete" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsLDAPAutoCompleteSession.cpp
"ldapautocomplete" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsLDAPAutoCompleteSession.cpp
"linker" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"mon" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"mozStorage" - storage/src/mozStorageConnection.cpp
"msgc" - nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/prmsgc.c:
"msgcompose" - mailnews/compose/src/nsMsgComposeService.cpp
"negotiateauth" - extensions/auth/nsAuthFactory.cpp
"nsAbOutlookCardLog" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsAbOutlookCard.cpp
"nsAbOutlookDirFactoryLog" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsAbOutlookDirFactory.cpp
"nsAbOutlookDirectoryLog" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsAbOutlookDirectory.cpp
"nsAbWinHelperLog" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsAbWinHelper.cpp
"nsCSSLoader" - layout/style/nsCSSLoader.cpp
"nsCachedChromeChannel" - chrome/src/nsChromeProtocolHandler.cpp
"nsCachedChromeChannel" - rdf/chrome/src/nsChromeProtocolHandler.cpp
"nsComponentManager" - xpcom/components/nsComponentManager.cpp
"nsContentPolicy" - content/base/src/nsContentPolicy.cpp
"nsDebug" - xpcom/base/nsDebugImpl.cpp
"nsDeviceContextPS" - gfx/src/ps/nsDeviceContextPS.cpp
"nsDeviceContextXp" - gfx/src/xprint/nsDeviceContextXP.cpp
"nsDirectoryIndexStream" - netwerk/base/src/nsDirectoryIndexStream.cpp
"nsDocShell" - docshell/base/nsDocShell.cpp
"nsDocShellLeak" - docshell/base/nsDocShell.cpp
"nsDragService" - widget/src/beos/nsDragService.cpp
"nsDragService" - widget/src/gtk/nsDragService.cpp
"nsDragService" - widget/src/gtk2/nsDragService.cpp
"nsElementMap" - content/xul/document/src/nsElementMap.cpp
"nsEventQueue" - xpcom/threads/nsEventQueue.cpp
"nsFTPDirListingConv" - netwerk/streamconv/converters/nsFTPDirListingConv.cpp
"nsFtp" - netwerk/protocol/ftp/src/nsFtpProtocolHandler.cpp
"nsHostResolver" - netwerk/dns/src/nsHostResolver.cpp
"nsHttp" - netwerk/protocol/http/src/nsHttpHandler.cpp
"nsIIdleService" - widget/src/gtk2/nsIdleServiceGTK.cpp
"nsIOThreadPool" - netwerk/base/src/nsIOThreadPool.cpp
"nsJarProtocol" - modules/libjar/nsJARChannel.cpp
"nsMapiAddressBookLog" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsMapiAddressBook.cpp
"nsMetricsService" - extensions/metrics/src/nsMetricsService.cpp
"nsNativeModuleLoader" - xpcom/components/nsNativeComponentLoader.cpp
"nsObjectFrame" - layout/generic/nsObjectFrame.cpp
"nsPipe" - xpcom/io/nsPipe3.cpp
"nsPostScriptObj" - gfx/src/ps/nsPostScriptObj.cpp
"nsPrefetch" - uriloader/prefetch/nsPrefetchService.cpp
"nsRDFContentSink" - rdf/base/src/nsRDFContentSink.cpp
"nsRDFService" - rdf/base/src/nsRDFService.cpp
"nsRDFXMLDataSource" - rdf/base/src/nsRDFXMLDataSource.cpp
"nsRequestObserverProxy" - netwerk/base/src/nsRequestObserverProxy.cpp
"nsResProtocol" - netwerk/protocol/res/src/nsResProtocolHandler.cpp
"nsSecureBrowserUI" - security/manager/boot/src/nsSecureBrowserUIImpl.cpp
"nsSharedPrefHandler" - modules/libpref/src/nsSharedPrefHandler.cpp
"nsSocketTransport" - netwerk/base/src/nsSocketTransportService2.cpp
"nsStandardURL" - netwerk/base/src/nsStandardURL.cpp
"nsStorageStream" - xpcom/io/nsStorageStream.cpp
"nsStreamCopier" - netwerk/base/src/nsAsyncStreamCopier.cpp
"nsStreamPump" - netwerk/base/src/nsInputStreamPump.cpp
"nsThread" - xpcom/threads/nsThread.cpp
"nsThreadPool" - xpcom/threads/nsThreadPool.cpp
"nsTimerImpl" - xpcom/threads/nsTimerImpl.h:
"nsWabAddressBookLog" - mailnews/addrbook/src/nsWabAddressBook.cpp
"nsWyciwygChannel" - content/html/document/src/nsWyciwygProtocolHandler.cpp
"nsXPrintContext" - gfx/src/xprint/nsXPrintContext.cpp
"nsXULCommandDispatcher" - content/xul/document/src/nsXULCommandDispatcher.cpp
"nsXULContentSink" - content/xul/document/src/nsXULContentSink.cpp
"nsXULDocument" - content/xul/document/src/nsXULDocument.cpp
"nsXULTemplateBuilder" - content/xul/templates/src/nsXULTemplateBuilder.cpp
"nscontentsink" - content/base/src/nsContentSink.cpp
"nss_cache" - security/nss/lib/pki/tdcache.c:
"nss_mod_log" - security/nss/lib/pk11wrap/debug_module.c:
"nssilock" - security/nss/lib/util/nssilock.c:
"objlc" - content/base/src/nsObjectLoadingContent.cpp
"pipnss" - security/manager/ssl/src/nsNSSComponent.cpp
"printing" - layout/base/nsDocumentViewer.cpp
"printing" - layout/printing/nsPrintData.cpp
"printing" - layout/printing/nsPrintEngine.cpp
"printing-gfx" - gfx/src/windows/nsDeviceContextWin.cpp
"printing-layout" - layout/generic/nsSimplePageSequence.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"printing-widget" - widget/src/windows/nsDeviceContextSpecWin.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"proxy" - netwerk/base/src/nsProtocolProxyService.cpp
"sched" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"schemaValidation" - extensions/schema-validation/src/nsSchemaValidator.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"schemaValidation" - extensions/schema-validation/src/nsSchemaValidatorUtils.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"shm" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"shma" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"styleverifytree" - layout/generic/nsFrame.cpp
"test" - nsprpub/pr/tests/y2k.c:
"testcase" - nsprpub/lib/tests/arena.c:
"testcase" - nsprpub/pr/tests/rmdir.c:
"thebesGfx" - gfx/src/thebes/nsThebesDeviceContext.cpp
"thread" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prinit.c:
"timing" - modules/libutil/public/stopwatch.h:
"trace" - nsprpub/pr/src/misc/prtrace.c:
"updatedriver" - toolkit/xre/nsUpdateDriver.cpp
"webdav" - extensions/webdav/src/nsWebDAVService.cpp
"webshell" - docshell/base/nsWebShell.cpp
"winfonts" - gfx/thebes/src/gfxWindowsFonts.cpp
"xpath" - content/xslt/src/base/txLog.h:
"xpclog" - js/src/xpconnect/src/xpclog.cpp
"xpcomproxy" - xpcom/proxy/src/nsProxyObjectManager.cppPRLogModuleInfo
"xslt" - content/xslt/src/base/txLog.h:

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Creating Your First Reftest, and Your Second and Third

I have updated a page on devmo and I think it is a rather nice page, though I am not objective here.

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Creating_reftest-based_unit_tests

This describes in very practical terms how to create reftests. It turns out to be way easier than it seemed at first. Really, I just had to map what reftest did into my head. Not being a long-time Mozilla-ish person, it probably took me longer than it would take others.

Here is a slice from the page, giving instructions on just the first test. Please see the page for more info. There are details in the full instructions that may be useful. And if something seems wrong, please feel free to update the page. Send me an e-mail if you would like, but wiki is more wiki if people really edit what they see. And now for the show.

Step 1: Build a copy of Firefox for yourself.

Step 2: Open a terminal window. Create a directory and make that your current directory.

Step 3: Create a file named foo.html with the following:


<html><head><title>reftest0001</title><body><strong>Hello!</strong></body></html>

Step 4: Create a file named bar.html with the following:


<html><head><title>reftest0001</title><body><b>Hello!</b></body></html>

Step 5: Create a file named reftest.list with the following:


== foo.html bar.html

One is now ready to run the test. Here is how I run this. Adapt this to your own platform.


% /bin/sh
$ /Users/ray/mo/browser/mozilla/dist/MinefieldDebug.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P minefield1 -reftest ./reftest.list 2>&1 | grep REFTEST
REFTEST PASS: file:///Users/ray/moz/reftest0001.html
$

Congratulations! You have just created your first retest!

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Quick and Easy Leaks Detection on Mac OS X

If you are using a Mac OS X machine and have Apple's Developer Tools, such as Xcode, on it, you have access to a very quick and easy way to check for memory leaks. Not everyone knows about this, though it has been available for at least a few versions of the Dev Tools, so I thought I would put this out.

If an application is running and you want to see if it is leaking memory, you can do run leaks and give it either a pid as a parameter, or a string matchable to the running process, such as "firefox-bin" or "thunderbird-bin". The string matching only works if only one such process is running. Here is an example:


$ leaks firefox
Found process 260 (firefox-bin) from partial name firefox
Process 260: 1263939 nodes malloced for 147066 KB
Process 260: 76194 leaks for 7262704 total leaked bytes.
Leak: 0x19aeea00  size=4096
      0x0d0a0d30 0x6320740a 0x7373616c 0x7462223d
      0x7420226e 0x3d657079 0x62757322 0x2274696d
      0x6c617620 0x223d6575 0x646e6946 0x64692022
      0x6966223d 0x625f646e 0x6f74746f 0x3c3e226d
      0x726f662f 0x2f3c3e6d 0x0a3e696c 0x3c20200a
      0x3c3e696c 0x6e617073 0x616c6320 0x223d7373
      ...
Leak: 0x19968200  size=1024
      0x6d6c6f63 0x68697074 0x00000008 0x00000000
      0x43fa8000 0x43ba0000 0x00000000 0x00000000
      0x6b6d6f64 0x6d61676e 0x00000004 0x00000000
      0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000
      0x77696e64 0x77696e64 0x00000004 0x00000000
      0x776d6f75 0x68697074 0x00000008 0x00000000
      0x43f60000 0x43aa8000 0x00000000 0x00000000
      ...
Leak: 0x20b1a200  size=1024
      0x6d6c6f63 0x68697074 0x00000008 0x00000000

This one actually goes on for about 350,000 lines. I had been running this instance of Firefox 2.0.0.1 for about an hour, but with a lot of tab use.

You can get stack frames and symbols in the stacks of leaked objects if you set environment variables that are explained in the man page.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement in controlling memory leaks.

There is actually much more I could say about this, but that is for another discussion. Really, I just wanted to say, here is a tool. It gives information. It is pretty accurate. If anyone has questions about using it, check the man page for the leaks executable, or feel free to ask me.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Testing Thunderbird as a Standalone

I do not want to mess up my e-mail account, but I do want to help test Thunderbird. I was able to install a James server from Apache on my machine. This is a mail server written in java. It was not very complicated to set up.

At this point, I have the James server configured. I have sent mail to one of my users using telnet to talk to the SMTP port. I have received that mail in Thunderbird. I have used these TB instances to send mail to each other. And I now have a script that can send messages to the clients.

The tasks for setting this up are:

1) download and configure James.
2) create profiles in Thunderbird and launch a different instance for each.
3) use the clients to e-mail each other.
4) use a script to send e-mails.

Configuring James

I am using James 2.3.0 from Apache. I have only made a few changes to a file, apps/james/SAR-INF/config.xml.

1) I commented out a "mailet":


This mailet was causing the mailer to think I was treating it like an open relay.

2) I changed an item inside the <servernames> bit:
<servername>10.0.1.6</servername>

This is the IP of the machine I am using when I am inside my house's firewall.

3) Inside the <remotemanager> bit, I changed the admin username and password. You do not have to, if you do not want to do so.
<account login="root" password="root"/>

4) Start the server.
% cd james-2.3.0 ; sudo bin/run.sh

5) Add some users.

One does this by using telnet to connect to the "remoteadmin" port, which defaults to 4555. Here is an example of adding usersm, with the stuff I typed in bold:
% telnet localhost 4555 Trying ::1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. JAMES Remote Administration Tool 2.3.0 Please enter your login and password Login id: ray Password: <mypassword> Welcome ray. HELP for a list of commands help Currently implemented commands: help - display this help listusers - display existing accounts countusers - display the number of existing accounts adduser [username] [password] - add a new user verify [username] - verify if specified user exist deluser [username] - delete existing user setpassword [username] [password] - sets a user's password setalias [user] [alias] - locally forwards all email for 'user' to 'alias' showalias [username] - shows a user's current email alias unsetalias [user] - unsets an alias for 'user' setforwarding [username] [emailaddress] - forwards a user's email to another email address showforwarding [username] - shows a user's current email forwarding unsetforwarding [username] - removes a forward user [repositoryname] - change to another user repository shutdown - kills the current JVM (convenient when James is run as a daemon) quit - close connection quit Bye Connection closed by foreign host. %

Creating Profiles

Moz-people know how to do this already. Just set up a profile for each user in the list you added in the step above.