Firefox/Kinto

Key features

• Diff-based data synchronization
• Data integrity/signing
• Offline persistence
• Admin panel UI

Use Cases

• Certificates blocklist (OneCRL) (contact: Mark Goodwin — mgoodwin)
• Addons/Plugins/Gfx Blocklisting (contact: Mathieu Leplatre — leplatrem)
• storage.sync API (WebExtensions) (contact: Tarek Ziadé — tarek)
• Fennec assets catalog (contact: Sebastian Kaspari — sebastian)
• Password manager recipes (contact: Matthew Noorenberghe — MattN)

Feel free to come and discuss on #storage :)

Usage

Leveraging the Kinto HTTP client in Gecko looks like this:

const { KintoHttpClient } = Cu.import("resource://services-common/kinto-http-client.js");

const client = new KintoHttpClient("https://kinto.dev.mozaws.net/v1");
client.bucket("a-bucket").collection("a-collection")
  .listRecords()
  .then(result => ...);

As for the Kinto offline-first client, it is like:

const { loadKinto } = Cu.import("resource://services-common/kinto-offline-client.js");

const KintoOfflineClient = loadKinto();

const client = new KintoOfflineClient({
  adapter: Kinto.adapters.FirefoxAdapter,
  remote: "https://kinto.dev.mozaws.net/v1",
  bucket: "a-bucket"
});

const collection = db.collection("a-collection");

try {
  yield collection.db.open();
  // Fetch changes from server.
  yield collection.sync();
  // Read local collection of records.
  const records = yield collection.list();
} finally {
  yield collection.db.close();
}

Specifications

Currently, the instance of Kinto used by Firefox clients is hosted at https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/

Blocklists

The goal is to replace the current system based on a single XML file downloaded everyday by several Kinto collections.

• The bucket is blocklists
• The collection for OneCRL entries is certificates https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/blocklists/collections/certificates/records
• The collection for Add-ons entries is addons https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/blocklists/collections/certificates/records
• The collection for Plugins entries is plugins https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/blocklists/collections/certificates/records
• The collection for Gfx entries is gfx https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/blocklists/collections/certificates/records

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1197707

Transition

Currently the blocklist system relies on a big XML file that is downloaded every day. It contains block entries for certificates to be revoked, addons and plugins to be disabled, and gfx environments that cause problems or crashes. Everything is managed via the Addons server.

Firefox (and derivatives like Thunderbird, Seamonkey, ...) downloads it on an URL that contains client information (eg. https://blocklist.addons.mozilla.org/blocklist/3/%7Bec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384%7D/44.0a1/)

Using the same XPCOM notification callback, the new mechanism will synchronize the local copy of each collection from the remote server. If changes are available, the local copy will be updated and content signature verified.

• In phase 1, it will be a no-op. Both mechanisms will run in parallel but only the legacy one will be used. We'll keep both mainly because the current download of the XML is used to count active daily users. Once we are ok with the statistics, we'll go to phase 2.
• In phase 2, we'll change the source of truth of block entries on the server side. The data from the Addons server won't be used anymore. That means the server will produce the same XML file but using the data stored in the new service.
• In phase 3, the blocking mechanism will rely on the data managed via JSON, and the old XML client will be decommissioned.

Fennec assets catalog

The goal is to remove the static assets (fonts, hyphenation dicts, etc.) from the distribution package and download them asynchronously using an online Kinto catalog.

• The bucket is fennec
• The collection is catalog

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1201059

Contribute

Upgrade client libraries

Two client libraries are embedded in Firefox:

• Kinto/kinto-client.js: for direct interactions with the Kinto HTTP API
• Kinto/kinto.js: for offline persistence in internal SQLite

Generate bundles

The Kinto client libraries are developed independently on Github:

• kinto-client is the HTTP client for the Kinto REST API;
• kinto.js is the offline-first client for Kinto.

With the help of Babel and browsersify, a bundle is generated for Firefox with the minimum transpilation possible (eg. CommonJS require, ES7 decorators).

kinto.js

From the kinto.js repo, generate the moz-kinto-offline-client.js file:

$ npm run dist-fx

And overwrite it in the Firefox code base:

$ cp dist/moz-kinto-offline-client.js ../mozilla-central/services/common/kinto-offline-client.js

kinto-client.js

From the kinto-client.js repo, generate the moz-kinto-http-client.js file:

$ npm run dist-fx

And overwrite it in the Firefox code base:

$ cp dist/moz-kinto-http-client.js ../mozilla-central/services/common/kinto-http-client.js

Run the tests

First, follow the instructions to build Firefox.

For JavaScript updates only, have a look at Artifacts Builds, trading bandwidth for compilation time.

$ ./mach build faster
$ ./mach xpcshell-test services/common/tests/unit/test_kinto.js
$ ./mach xpcshell-test services/common/tests/unit/test_storage_adapter.js

Or all tests related to Kinto:

$ ./mach xpcshell-test services/common/tests/unit/*into*

Gfx blocklist tests

The Gfx test suite requires the debug mode to be enabled. Add this to mozconfig file, rebuild and run the tests:

ac_add_options --enable-debug

Debug content signature

You can get tests (or Firefox) to give you more information on what the content signature verifier is doing by setting the NSPR_LOG_MODULES environment variable. For example:

EXPORT NSPR_LOG_MODULES=ContentSignatureVerifier:5,CSTrustDomain:5

TDD mode

Using inotify, we will detect a file change in the dist/ folder and run a series of commands to execute the tests automatically.

First, install inotify-tools:

sudo apt-get install inotify-tools

Then start an infinite loop with inotify-wait:

while true; do
    # Wait for a change
    inotifywait -q -e create,modify,delete -r ~/Code/Mozilla/kinto.js/dist
    # Execute these commands
    cp ~/Code/Mozilla/kinto.js/dist/moz-kinto-offline-client.js services/common/kinto-offline-client.js
    ./mach xpcshell-test services/common/tests/unit/test_storage_adapter.js
    ./mach xpcshell-test services/common/tests/unit/test_kinto.js          
done

Source: Antoine Cezar

Submit patch

> Patch are contributed to kinto.js and kinto-client.js, which are first released on NPM.

DO NOT land files that are not tagged officially on upstream repositories.

Become a contributor

• Generate a SSH key
• Open a bugzilla ticket to request Level-1 access
• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/commit/access-policy/
• Get a vouch (*optional for level1*)

Configure SSH key for hg:

Host hg.mozilla.org
  User user@server.com
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/contrib_moz

Run integration tests: «Try»

See https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseEngineering/TryServer

Or use a gecko-dev fork from Github, and with install moz git tools

git push-to-try -t --rev master..HEAD ~/hg/mozilla-central/ -b do -p linux,linux64,macosx64,win32,win64 -u xpcshell -t none

Submit for review

See http://mozilla-version-control-tools.readthedocs.org

# Commit with link to Bugzilla
hg commit -m "Bug XXXXX - Upgrade <lib> to X.Y.Z"

# Submit to MozReview
hg push review

# Keep a bookmark of your branch to address review.
hg bookmark bug-XXXXX

# Go back to «master»
hg update central

Examples:

• https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/45445/