How to make current icecat less crashy

How to make current icecat less crashy

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Seems a lot of us have been experiencing crashes in the current Icecat.
in Guix master.  Ricardo Wurmus gave me a nice tip that seems to have
fixed the problem here:

  <rekado> go to about:config
  <rekado> find the keys gfx.canvas.azure.backends and
           gfx.content.azure.backends
  <rekado> for both change “cairo” to “skia”
  <rekado> note that for me this results in less readable fonts

Seems to work here!  (I haven't noticed the font issue but I could just
be missing it.)

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[David Craven]

> Seems a lot of us have been experiencing crashes in the current Icecat.

How recent is this? Could it be related to this commit?

eaf72e218e38c0c908ee30c914ab7d9c0c0389b8
Author: David Craven <david@craven.ch>
Date:   Wed Oct 26 14:27:15 2016 +0200

    gnu: icecat: Enable gtk3 support.

    * gnu/packages/gnuzilla.scm (icecat)[inputs]: Add gtk+.
      [arguments]: Use --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk3.

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[Leo Famulari]

On Fri, Nov 04, 2016 at 03:35:29AM +0100, David Craven wrote:
> > Seems a lot of us have been experiencing crashes in the current Icecat.
> 
> How recent is this? Could it be related to this commit?
> 
> eaf72e218e38c0c908ee30c914ab7d9c0c0389b8
> Author: David Craven <david@craven.ch>
> Date:   Wed Oct 26 14:27:15 2016 +0200
> 
>     gnu: icecat: Enable gtk3 support.
> 
>     * gnu/packages/gnuzilla.scm (icecat)[inputs]: Add gtk+.
>       [arguments]: Use --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk3.

Good question. I don't use Guix's IceCat regularly but I was able to
reproduce the crashes within 5 minutes of browsing sites that contained
lots of videos, GIFs, images, etc.

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[ng0]

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> writes:

> On Fri, Nov 04, 2016 at 03:35:29AM +0100, David Craven wrote:
>> > Seems a lot of us have been experiencing crashes in the current Icecat.
>> 
>> How recent is this? Could it be related to this commit?

For me since we have the new icecat, not just since this commit.

>> eaf72e218e38c0c908ee30c914ab7d9c0c0389b8
>> Author: David Craven <david@craven.ch>
>> Date:   Wed Oct 26 14:27:15 2016 +0200
>> 
>>     gnu: icecat: Enable gtk3 support.
>> 
>>     * gnu/packages/gnuzilla.scm (icecat)[inputs]: Add gtk+.
>>       [arguments]: Use --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk3.
>
> Good question. I don't use Guix's IceCat regularly but I was able to
> reproduce the crashes within 5 minutes of browsing sites that contained
> lots of videos, GIFs, images, etc.
>
>

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[David Craven]

I thought it might have something to do with
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127752, but that's fixed
since FF41. In FF46 gtk3 is enabled by default, so I can't imagine
FF45 (the version icecat is using) to be too buggy. It's a pity that
icecat only tracks ESR releases :/

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[Christopher Allan Webber]

ng0 writes:

> Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> writes:
>
>> On Fri, Nov 04, 2016 at 03:35:29AM +0100, David Craven wrote:
>>> > Seems a lot of us have been experiencing crashes in the current Icecat.
>>> 
>>> How recent is this? Could it be related to this commit?
>
> For me since we have the new icecat, not just since this commit.

That was my experience as well.

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[Arun Isaac]

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> Seems to work here!  (I haven't noticed the font issue but I could just
> be missing it.)

Interesting. I have been having font issues with the Tamil (Indic
script) language with respect to bold and italic text. I thought they
were unrelated to the crashes. But, maybe, they are related.

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Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[Leo Famulari]

On Thu, Nov 03, 2016 at 08:31:36PM -0500, Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
> Seems a lot of us have been experiencing crashes in the current Icecat.
> in Guix master.  Ricardo Wurmus gave me a nice tip that seems to have
> fixed the problem here:
> 
>   <rekado> go to about:config
>   <rekado> find the keys gfx.canvas.azure.backends and
>            gfx.content.azure.backends
>   <rekado> for both change “cairo” to “skia”
>   <rekado> note that for me this results in less readable fonts

Can we set this option while building?

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[ng0]

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> writes:

> On Thu, Nov 03, 2016 at 08:31:36PM -0500, Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
>> Seems a lot of us have been experiencing crashes in the current Icecat.
>> in Guix master.  Ricardo Wurmus gave me a nice tip that seems to have
>> fixed the problem here:
>> 
>>   <rekado> go to about:config
>>   <rekado> find the keys gfx.canvas.azure.backends and
>>            gfx.content.azure.backends
>>   <rekado> for both change “cairo” to “skia”
>>   <rekado> note that for me this results in less readable fonts
>
> Can we set this option while building?

No, but we can modify/substitute the config icecat uses, and set
it there see 
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/eclass/mozconfig-v6.49.eclass
and search for "skia". Or, I haven't looked at it too closely, it
can be passed to the configure script.

Re: How to make current icecat less crashy

[Hartmut Goebel]

Am 05.11.2016 um 20:01 schrieb Leo Famulari:
> Can we set this option while building?

Fedora adds default configs be simply copying [1] a file [2] to
|…/browser/defaults/preferences.|

[1]
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/firefox.git/tree/firefox.spec#n667

[2]
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/firefox.git/tree/firefox-redhat-default-prefs.js

-- 
Regards
Hartmut Goebel

| Hartmut Goebel          | h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com               |
| www.crazy-compilers.com | compilers which you thought are impossible |