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Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

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Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#61

Post by qingcharles »

mrweasel wrote: post #15

Not that I really see away around it, given the size and feature set of Chrome, but those build requirements are just crazy. It kinda throws the open source and "everyone can contribute" model out the window, if you can't afford a pretty insane workstation then you're going to have a bad time. I doubt that Firefox is better, I seem to remember that building Firefox and the VIA C3 processor years back as around half a…

The onerous requirements are just for a first build, though?

I used to leave things like that running overnight in the old days.

All subsequent builds are just going to be compiling the one or two files you changed and then linking in the other 99.9%, which isn't going to take very long.

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#62

Post by gruez »

varispeed wrote: post #42
creesch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this, the thing they fixed is something they depend on for their daily programming needs relatively often. By fixing it themselves instead of waiting for who knows how long, they are saving a lot of future time and frustration. They don't to work around the issue anymore and can simply focus on what they want. Which is also worth something.

But that will make these companies lazy. Chromium is open source, in my opinion, because Google can brag about open source, it has all the right buzzwords. But also gives them free R&D and labour. I think given the size and wealth of Google, this is entirely inappropriate and people shouldn't be contributing to it, because it will only encourage this parasitic and exploitative behaviour.

>I think given the size and wealth of Google, this is entirely inappropriate and people shouldn't be contributing to it, because it will only encourage this parasitic and exploitative behaviour.

So you would rather have chromium be closed source, or for people to fix the bug but hoard the patches? Do you hate the idea of google benefiting from your work so much that you're willing screw over yourself (in the form of having to maintain the bugfixes yourself) and others (because they don't get the bugfixes) in the process? Are you also against contributing improvements to other OSS projects (eg. linux kernel) because corporations might benefit from it and "gives them free R&D and labour"?

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#63

Post by quirino »

bkor wrote: post #60
quirino wrote: post #58

There's this one Chrome (?) bug I've been experiencing for a long time on Linux. Every once in a while, the browser detects I'm typing "±±±±±±+..." and writes that to any selected text input. It stops when I type anything, but sometimes comes back rather quickly. I thought it was a keyboard issue, but it doesn't affect Firefox or other applications, only Chrome based ones like Spotify and VSCode. I've found no other…

> Every once in a while, the browser detects I'm typing "±±±±±±+..." Interesting bug! Not exactly following on what triggers the bug. Do you have a ± key on your keyboard (some international one)? Or does it occur after e.g. pressing "+", then "-"? Do you use compose keys? Does it do this randomly?

I don't have a ± key. I'm using swaywm which seems to have no compose key set by default, I've tried all the common ones and they don't act as such.

I haven't been able to detect any pattern to what triggers this, at all. It is always "±".

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#64

Post by cxr »

rafram wrote: post #43
madeofpalk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I doubt that Firefox is better Firefox builds are seemingly more modular. I was hacking on the Firefox devtools a while back, which from source involved downloading a pre-build main brower binary and building just devtools from your source. This made it significantly faster due to not having to build the rest of Firefox from source. Of course, this will all depend on which part of the source code you're changing.

Firefox isn’t very modular. There’s just a C++ part and a JS part and they can be built independently. My understanding is that new developers are encouraged to focus on the JS. The devtools team is entirely JS, with some fancy modern affordances (TypeScript type definitions!) that teams working on the older parts of the JS codebase don’t have.

The build process for the rest of Firefox could be as modular as devtools. When I was involved with Mozilla (and for a while after), it was a frequent criticism of mine that no one was prioritizing making the contribution process as easy as possible for people who didn't have an email address ending in @mozilla.com.

Zotero has (had?) a really cool build system. Zotero is written on an Electron-like architecture, except it uses a Gecko-based runtime instead of Blink. (Firefox is the same way and has always been this way, and this predates not just Electron, but Chrome/Chromium, too.) Similar to the way that Electron apps' build scripts generally work by downloading a prebuilt Electron (rather than requiring developers build it from source), Zotero works by downloading a release build of Firefox, unarchiving everything, sweeping away all the XHTML/XUL/CSS/JS that comprises the Firefox UI and application logic, and then swapping in the components that make up Zotero. (In other words, just how it should work 90+% of contributors who want to submit patches against Firefox nightlies, too.)

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#65

Post by modeless »

This is great! You should consider fixing the Chromium bugs you run into! Chrome releases relatively quickly, so in 4-6 weeks you can have a bug fixed forever for all of your users on Chrome.

I used to work on Chrome and WebKit and I still have committer status. I've often wondered if there are people out there who would be willing to pay a contributor to get their bug fixed, but don't know who to contact. Feel free to email me :)

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#66

Post by xyst »

quirino wrote: post #58

There's this one Chrome (?) bug I've been experiencing for a long time on Linux. Every once in a while, the browser detects I'm typing "±±±±±±+..." and writes that to any selected text input. It stops when I type anything, but sometimes comes back rather quickly. I thought it was a keyboard issue, but it doesn't affect Firefox or other applications, only Chrome based ones like Spotify and VSCode. I've found no other…

I vaguely recall experiencing this on my gaming pc (windows). Although with a diff character (W?)

Seems like a race condition, and exacerbated by whatever kb you are using. Are you using a Corsair or Razer kb by any chance? And is it wireless or wired?

I know you suspected it may be a kb issue but have you tried swapping kb to make sure? I junked my old corsair kb because I thought it was just stuck keys after too many “kb smash” events. Don’t recall it happening again after swapping to diff manufacturer (Wooten, wired).

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#68

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

nunez wrote: post #41

> I'll unashamedly admit that I made liberal use of printf debugging while trying to make my way through these code paths Nothing to be ashamed of, imo; printf debugging works incredibly well!

Yep. Debuggers are more powerful, they can do everything `printf` debugging can do + more, but take more work to set up. For interpreted languages, they often take more work to use than just adding a print statement & rerunning, for compiled languages the reverse is more likely.

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#69

Post by devsda »

mrweasel wrote: post #15

Not that I really see away around it, given the size and feature set of Chrome, but those build requirements are just crazy. It kinda throws the open source and "everyone can contribute" model out the window, if you can't afford a pretty insane workstation then you're going to have a bad time. I doubt that Firefox is better, I seem to remember that building Firefox and the VIA C3 processor years back as around half a…

> I doubt that Firefox is better, I seem to remember that building Firefox and the VIA C3 processor years back as around half a day of compiling, but was also an extremely poorly choose CPU for the task.

Around 6-7 years back, I was able to make a change & build Firefox from source on a mid-range gaming laptop without much fiddling. I think the build took may be around an hour or more and it was not too long to stand out.

I haven't tried building chromium to compare but from my past experience, Firefox's build was not too challenging for first time contributors.

Re: Fixing a bug in Google Chrome as a first-time contributor

#70

Post by cxr »

creesch wrote: post #19
mrweasel wrote: post #15

Not that I really see away around it, given the size and feature set of Chrome, but those build requirements are just crazy. It kinda throws the open source and "everyone can contribute" model out the window, if you can't afford a pretty insane workstation then you're going to have a bad time. I doubt that Firefox is better, I seem to remember that building Firefox and the VIA C3 processor years back as around half a…

> It kinda throws the how open source and "everyone can contribute" model out the window, if you can't afford a pretty insane workstation then you're going to have a bad time. That, it also means you are going to spend a lot of time on it before you can even attempt to do anything. Overall, there can be a pretty substantial amount of effort involved before you are even ready to make a PR of any kind. Then it remains…

"Patches welcome" vs "patches wanted"[1].

1. https://www.colbyrussell.com/2013/08/06/patches-wanted.html>

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