Category Archives: code

Code review: gatekeepers vs. coaches

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Josh Matthews

I wrote a list of code review guidelines for the Servo project last year. They encapsulate the feedback that we expect our project contributors to provide when reviewing code changes, but I want to explore the motivation behind them. You’ll … Continue reading →

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Creating a C API for a Rust library

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Josh Matthews

Yoric has been doing great work porting Firefox’s client backend to Rust for use in Servo (see telemetry.rs), so I decided to create a C API to allow using it from other contexts. You can observe the general direction of … Continue reading →

Posted in code, rust | 9 Comments

The Fast and the Furious: bzexport

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Josh Matthews

If you’re a bzexport user, you’ll want to pull the latest revision. It’s recently been getting slower due to the number of http requests that need to be made (the tradeoff here is that it’s also been getting more correct), … Continue reading →

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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

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

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