Annoying behaviour of Firefox Developer Edition - Crashes a lot while debugging JS

3
votes

I am using Firefox regular edition since years and have very seamless experience while browsing and debugging apps. Few months back firefox launched its developer edition, so I switched to FF developer edition. But what I experienced is that, it crashes a lot while debugging JS (angularjs and jquery code) and some times the debugger does not hit at all even though that line of codes are being executed. This is really an annoying behaviour of firefox developer edition. Why it is so unstable even though I haven't installed any addons at all. Is Firefox Developer Edition is unstable or it is something related to my system.

What I observed so far if some line of my code in js (Angular, Jquery or plain vanilla) has any error (like calling any undefined scope variable in controller in angularjs or calling any function from services which is undefined in angularjs) it crashes while executing same in chrome it simply skips that line and shows error in console. For debugging I apply breakpoints at multiple lines and then use F8 to jump line.

Is there any solution to solve this issue?

Here is crash report.

2
javascriptfirefoxweb-inspectorfirefox-developer-toolsfirefox-developer-edition
I'm sorry you're seeing crashes. If you have some time, please log a bug on the debugger specifically, we would love to get as much additional info as possible about what causes the crashes. Failing that, do you mind expanding your question to more detail like: what OS you're using and as much detail specifically on how to trigger the crashes. – therealjeffg
@canuckistani- Here is the detailed bug report: crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/… – Saurabh Palatkar
That's a link to a stack trace, which is helpful, but we also need to know what we should do to make the crash happen on our own machines. If you can give me step-by-step directions I can follow to make it crash, we can definitely fix it. – Jim Blandy
@JimBlandy - Actually there isn't any particular pattern for simulating crash, but what I observed so far if some line of my code in js (Angular, Jquery or plain vanilla) has any error (like calling any undefined scope variable in controller in angularjs or calling any function from services which is undefined in angular) it crashes while executing same in chrome it simply skips that line and shows error in console. For debugging I apply breakpoints at multiple lines and then use F8 to jump line. – Saurabh Palatkar
If you could join us in the bug we've opened, I have some further questions. bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1137836 – Jim Blandy

2 Answers

4
votes

As of Jul 2017:

Firefox Developer Edition is Firefox Beta.

There are the following Firefox channels/repositories:

Release (mozilla-release) – The official release of Firefox. Firefox is released on a six week schedule, meaning that every sixth week there will be new versions of Firefox Release.

Beta (mozilla-beta) – Testing the next version of Firefox before it becomes the official release. Firefox Beta is released every week leaving us with six beta's every cycle unless there are chemspills leading to additional beta's.

Nightly (mozilla-central) – Contains experimental features. Nightly is, naturally, released every night with all changes on mozilla-central.

The current stable release is version 54, the current beta / developer edition is version 55, the current nightly is version 56.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/04/simplifying-firefox-release-channels/

As of Jan 2015:

Firefox Developer Edition is basically an alpha quality release containing stabilized new features landed from the nightly channel.

There are the following Firefox channels/repositories:

Release (mozilla-release) – The official release of Firefox. Firefox is released on a six week schedule, meaning that every sixth week there will be new versions of Firefox Release.

Beta (mozilla-beta) – Testing the next version of Firefox before it becomes the official release. Firefox Beta is released every week leaving us with six beta's every cycle unless there are chemspills leading to additional beta's.

Aurora / Developer Edition (mozilla-aurora) – For web/platform developers and early adopters. Firefox Aurora is released every morning once changes that landed on mozilla-aurora stabilize.

Nightly (mozilla-central) – Contains experimental features. Nightly is, naturally, released every night with all changes on mozilla-central.

The current stable release is version 35, the current beta is version 36, the current aurora / developer edition is version 37.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Release_Process

2
votes

The Firefox devtools team has a number of open bugs related to missed breakpoints, and they're a high priority. The underlying issue is that the source position information generated by the bytecode compiler (Firefox compiles JS to bytecode, and then compiles bytecode to machine code if it's actually used often enough to be worth the time) is not terribly accurate. See, for example, Bug 1003554 - Strange behavior when stepping through try statement