Author Archives: Josh Matthews

nsCOMPtr has never been so pretty

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Josh Matthews

Jim Blandy announced his archer-mozilla pretty-printers for Spidermonkey late last year. I’ve used them a few times while working on some JS proxy bugs, and I’ve found them to be invaluable. So invaluable, in fact, that I’ve written a bunch … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla, projects | 3 Comments

Self-serve tools: now more likely to work

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Josh Matthews

If you’ve given my self-serve tools a try (in particular, cancel.py) and had it claim that it couldn’t authorize you, it’s time to give it another shot. Steven Fink, being the wonderful person he is, dove in and found some … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla | 1 Comment

Build smarter, not harder

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Josh Matthews

I spent the past six weeks roaming around Europe with a netbook, and used that time productively to get some work done on Firefox. Part of that involved building on Windows for the first time, and experiencing the joy of … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla | 6 Comments

JS runnables: now with less boilerplate

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Josh Matthews

Actually, this little trick has been possible for at least a year and a half since I fixed the enhancement request, but I don’t believe it’s common knowledge. When writing something like someEventTarget.dispatch({ run: function() { … }), you can … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla | 2 Comments

Cancelling builds from the console, now easier than ever!

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Josh Matthews

The self-serve tools, specifically cancel.py has received some important usability upgrades at the urging of jst and ehsan. Now, simply running python cancel.py will be enough to get you going – you’ll be prompted for your username, password, branch and … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla, projects | 3 Comments

How to identify expected and unexpected crashes in tinderbox logs

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Josh Matthews

I’ve seen this come up in several bugs recently, and it’s time to disseminate some knowledge. Here is what an unexpected crash usually looks like: TEST-UNEXPECTED-FAIL | /tests/content/media/test/test_seek.html | application timed out after 330 seconds with no output PROCESS-CRASH | … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla | 1 Comment

Self-serve, now in bulk

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Josh Matthews

Update: the tool is now easier to use and doesn’t require adding your password as an argument. See this post for more details. I’m a big fan of the self-serve tool that RelEng provided for people with LDAP access. When … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla, projects | 5 Comments

nsITimer anti-pattern

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Josh Matthews

I’ve filed bug 640629 to address an intermittent source of orange: incorrect nsITimer creation. I first ran across it while working on making httpd.js collect garbage more frequently, a task which quickly turned into orange whack-a-mole as more and more … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla | 4 Comments

Knowledge++

Posted on April 4, 2010 by Josh Matthews

Nine days ago, I made an off-hand remark in #content that I might be able to get the geolocation service working in Fennectrolysis by the end of the day if my plans worked out. I also remember referring to the … Continue reading →

Posted in code, mozilla | 4 Comments

I’ve seen the future, brother: it is dynamic additions to the status bar that don’t block the main process.

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Josh Matthews

You’re looking at a mind-bogglingly alpha Jetpack prototype running out of process. Yesterday was a black triangle moment for me, as I finally saw the culmination of 2.5 months of work to make the words “Gmail it” appear in the … Continue reading →

Posted in mozilla, projects | 2 Comments