7 ms·

I have a feeling Servo will finally make me give up Chrome. From what I've seen so far the performance is very impressive [1]. I just wonder if Elecrolysis will

I have a feeling Servo will finally make me give up Chrome. From what I've seen so far the performance is very impressive [1]. I just wonder if Elecrolysis will ever arrive. It seems like I've been waiting for it forever. Chrome's sandboxing is great for security and performance purposes and I can't give that up (I never seem to have a problem switching to another tab even when I have 40 of them open in Chrome, while in Firefox the whole browser "hangs" sometimes when I load a heavy tab). [1] - https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNDA https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNDA

simcop2387 11y ago
Electrolysis isn't a Servo thing but a Firefox thing. Something that many of us have been waiting for also. From what I've seen with the way Servo works, it should be working in basically the same way from the beginning but I'm not as confident on that as I'd like to be. Since it renders and works on each iframe in another thread and each tab is implemented as an iframe with mozbrowser extensions I would think it should fix that problem.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  I think he was talking about Firefox. FWIW in Servo when talking of multiprocess stuff we colloquially call it "Electrolysis". I think Patrick has some work in progress on this. It's not as much work as the Firefox e10s (we already use threads and channels for everything), but I think there is some (relatively) minor work to be done.
  - zobzu 11y ago
    how do you handle component sandboxing in Servo compared to firefox e10s? (firefox being child process sandbox, ipc to parent, and things being a little "unperfect" in the separation)
    - pcwalton 11y ago
      The plan is to use gaol [1] for sandboxing. For IPC, we want to send Rust objects serialized via serde [2] over native OS IPC pipes (AF_UNIX sockets on Unix). [1]: https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol [2]: https://github.com/serde-rs/serde https://github.com/serde-rs/serde
      - zobzu 11y ago
        that looks nice i hope the separation between processes themselves will be nicer than firefox (or even chrome) since its "from scratch" :) (ie that it wont be remoting everything and only protect the system from escaping a child - makes sense in firefox/chrome, less with rust being the compiler i guess) I suspect that if servo doesnt try to be an OS like firefox/chrome do, a whole process sandbox may even be fine enough. But if it does.. :)
chimeracoder 11y ago
> I just wonder if Elecrolysis will ever arrive. It seems like I've been waiting for it forever. It's here already, in Nightly: https://nightly.mozilla.org/ https://nightly.mozilla.org/ (more info: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis). I haven't really had the problem you're talking about in Firefox as it is, but you can try it out and see if Nightly is any better. Keep in mind that Nightly is slower overall than Firefox, because it has a number of debugging flags enabled that impact performance. Obligatory disclaimer: Nightly has lots of bugs and quirks compared to Firefox, so it should not be considered indicative of the normal Firefox experience[0]. Also, many extensions have not yet been ported (which is why it's available in Nightly for developers before hitting Firefox). [0] That said, it's pretty damn stable. I'd be using it for my daily browsing except that I can't live without Vimperator, which hasn't yet been ported to e10s: https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/211 https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/211
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  I know it's in Nightly, but wasn't it in Nightly 3-5 months ago, too? Shouldn't it have moved to the "next" development version by now, like Aurora or whichever is the next "more stable" one, if Firefox follows a 6-weeks development cycle?
  - callahad 11y ago
    Not every feature can be completed in a single six-week train, especially one as complex as rewriting huge chunks of a browser that was not initially designed with process separation in mind. :) That said, we should have a go/no-go on Monday for uplift with Firefox 40. We're getting Very Close Now. :)
    - mconley_ 11y ago
      If we do the uplift, I believe the plan is also to hold there until we clear out a bunch of less-critical, but shipping-blocking bugs. So it might be on Aurora for a few releases.
gbersac 11y ago
It does look like amazing performance. But It may be too early too conclude on that point. The gain of performance may only be because of less feature implemented in servo leading to less thing to compute => less computational time.
sambe 11y ago
I never experience that in Firefox and have much more than 40 tabs open. Granted if the tab is not actually loaded, then it will go off and load it. How does Chrome's model help here?

simcop2387 11y ago

Electrolysis isn't a Servo thing but a Firefox thing. Something that many of us have been waiting for also. From what I've seen with the way Servo works, it should be working in basically the same way from the beginning but I'm not as confident on that as I'd like to be. Since it renders and works on each iframe in another thread and each tab is implemented as an iframe with mozbrowser extensions I would think it should fix that problem.

Manishearth 11y ago
I think he was talking about Firefox. FWIW in Servo when talking of multiprocess stuff we colloquially call it "Electrolysis". I think Patrick has some work in progress on this. It's not as much work as the Firefox e10s (we already use threads and channels for everything), but I think there is some (relatively) minor work to be done.
- zobzu 11y ago
  how do you handle component sandboxing in Servo compared to firefox e10s? (firefox being child process sandbox, ipc to parent, and things being a little "unperfect" in the separation)
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    The plan is to use gaol [1] for sandboxing. For IPC, we want to send Rust objects serialized via serde [2] over native OS IPC pipes (AF_UNIX sockets on Unix). [1]: https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol https://github.com/pcwalton/gaol [2]: https://github.com/serde-rs/serde https://github.com/serde-rs/serde
    - zobzu 11y ago
      that looks nice i hope the separation between processes themselves will be nicer than firefox (or even chrome) since its "from scratch" :) (ie that it wont be remoting everything and only protect the system from escaping a child - makes sense in firefox/chrome, less with rust being the compiler i guess) I suspect that if servo doesnt try to be an OS like firefox/chrome do, a whole process sandbox may even be fine enough. But if it does.. :)

chimeracoder 11y ago

> I just wonder if Elecrolysis will ever arrive. It seems like I've been waiting for it forever. It's here already, in Nightly: https://nightly.mozilla.org/ https://nightly.mozilla.org/ (more info: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis). I haven't really had the problem you're talking about in Firefox as it is, but you can try it out and see if Nightly is any better. Keep in mind that Nightly is slower overall than Firefox, because it has a number of debugging flags enabled that impact performance. Obligatory disclaimer: Nightly has lots of bugs and quirks compared to Firefox, so it should not be considered indicative of the normal Firefox experience[0]. Also, many extensions have not yet been ported (which is why it's available in Nightly for developers before hitting Firefox). [0] That said, it's pretty damn stable. I'd be using it for my daily browsing except that I can't live without Vimperator, which hasn't yet been ported to e10s: https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/211 https://github.com/vimperator/vimperator-labs/issues/211

higherpurpose 11y ago
I know it's in Nightly, but wasn't it in Nightly 3-5 months ago, too? Shouldn't it have moved to the "next" development version by now, like Aurora or whichever is the next "more stable" one, if Firefox follows a 6-weeks development cycle?
- callahad 11y ago
  Not every feature can be completed in a single six-week train, especially one as complex as rewriting huge chunks of a browser that was not initially designed with process separation in mind. :) That said, we should have a go/no-go on Monday for uplift with Firefox 40. We're getting Very Close Now. :)
  - mconley_ 11y ago
    If we do the uplift, I believe the plan is also to hold there until we clear out a bunch of less-critical, but shipping-blocking bugs. So it might be on Aurora for a few releases.

gbersac 11y ago

It does look like amazing performance. But It may be too early too conclude on that point. The gain of performance may only be because of less feature implemented in servo leading to less thing to compute => less computational time.

sambe 11y ago

I never experience that in Firefox and have much more than 40 tabs open. Granted if the tab is not actually loaded, then it will go off and load it. How does Chrome's model help here?