Mozilla memory profiling

As a Mozilla hacker, extension developer and Javascript expert, I've been really exited to see the current work of Atul Varma on memory profiling in Firefox! It's naturally the next step of tool to build after XUL Profiler, which track CPU consumption and Javascript functions calls.
So, instead of waiting for web developers to describe their future new "memory" firebug tab :), I've searched what information we can retrieve from JS API. And I've not limited my scope to web content but I take all Browser objects into account.

First I've tried to find a meaningful parent for every living object.
In the Mozilla planet we may face with three main types of parents :

(But there is also XBL, sandboxes and some others strange things like "Block")

Here is the first result of this work :

another-profiler_techno-barje.fr-1.0.xpi

This extension need Jetpack 0.6+. It adds a "Open another memory profiler" item in Tools menu and display all living windows, xpcoms and modules. Then when you select one of them, it displays the simplest profiling ever: number of js objects group by C++ native class. I'll show you in the next blog post how to display a better profiling!
another-profiler-1.0.png But for now, I'm going to show you all the code needed to make this first version.

For the living windows, there is a lot of cases, but it's simple :
// Get the list of absolutery ALL windows living in a Firefox session, stored as a Tree
function getAllWindows() {
  var windows = [];
  

// Begin by iterating over all top chrome windows (browser, jsconsole, dominspector, etc.) var wm = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1"] .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator); var enumerator = wm.getXULWindowEnumerator(null); while(enumerator.hasMoreElements()) { var win = enumerator.getNext(); if (win instanceof Components.interfaces.nsIXULWindow) { // Search for all children windows (sidebar, content, iframes, ...) parseDocshell(win.docShell); } }

function getWindowByDocShell(docShell) { if (!(docShell instanceof Components.interfaces.nsIInterfaceRequestor)) return; return docShell.getInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIDOMWindow); } function parseDocshell(docShell) { if (!docShell) return; var domWindow = getWindowByDocShell(docShell);

var topWindow = {
      type  : "window",
      name  : domWindow.document.title,
      href  : domWindow.location.href,
      object: domWindow,
      children: []
    };
windows.push(topWindow);

var topWindows = [topWindow];

var treeItemType = Components.interfaces.nsIDocShellTreeItem.typeAll;
// From inspector@mozilla.org inspector.js appendContainedDocuments
// Load all the window's content docShells
var containedDocShells = docShell.getDocShellEnumerator(treeItemType,
                                  Components.interfaces.nsIDocShell.ENUMERATE_FORWARDS);
while (containedDocShells.hasMoreElements())
{
  var childShell = containedDocShells.getNext().QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIDocShell);
  
  if (childShell == docShell) {
    // It's the current topWindow
    continue;
  }
  
  var childDOMWindow = getWindowByDocShell(childShell);
  if (!childDOMWindow) continue;
  var parent;
  for(var i=0; i<topWindows.length; i++) {
    if (topWindows[i].object == childDOMWindow.parent) {
      parent = topWindows[i];
      break;
    }
  }
  var newWindow = {
    type  : "window",
    name  : childDOMWindow.document.title,
    href  : childDOMWindow.location.href,
    object: childDOMWindow,
    children : []
  };
  topWindows.push(newWindow);
  if (parent)
    parent.children.push(newWindow);
  else
    topWindow.children.push(newWindow);
}
delete topWindows;

}

// Finally, don't forget the hidden window, it's a big one used by many extensions! var hiddenWindow = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/appshell/appShellService;1"] .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIAppShellService) .hiddenWindow; if (hiddenWindow instanceof Components.interfaces.nsIXULWindow) { parseDocshell(hiddenWindow.docShell); }

return windows; }



For XPCOM services, it's shorter, but it' an unknown practice :

// Get the list of all XPCOM services (not the xpcom objects, only services) in a Firefox session
function getAllXPCOMServices() {
  var instanciatedServices = [];
  var serviceManager=Components.manager.QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIServiceManager);
  var supports = Components.interfaces.nsISupports;
  for(var cl in Components.classes) {
    try {
      if (serviceManager.isServiceInstantiated(Components.classes[cl],supports)) {
        var service=Components.classes[cl].getService(supports);
        if (service.wrappedJSObject) {
          // Get the global object
          service=service.wrappedJSObject.__parent__;
          if (!service)
            service=Components.classes[cl].getService(supports).__parent__;
          instanciatedServices.push({
            type   : "xpcom",
            name   : cl,
            object : service
          });
        }
      }
    } catch(e) {
      // serviceManager.isServiceInstantiated is throwing if there is no instance ...
    }
  }
  return instanciatedServices;
}


But for JS Modules, I've not found any way to get those ...
The only solution I've got was to do a quick profiling and identify them :
function searchJSModules () {
  var jsmodules = [];
  

var roots=getGCRoots(); for(var r in roots) { var id = roots[r]; var info = getObjectInfo(id); var properties = getObjectProperties(id); /* // We can also identify XPCOM by reading global NSGetModule function var nsgetmodule = getObjectProperty(id,"NSGetModule").NSGetModule; if (nsgetmodule) { print (" --> is an XPCOM"); print (" --> defined in : "+getObjectInfo(nsgetmodule).filename); continue; } */ // See if the current object has a EXPORTED_SYMBOLS object // We suppose every JS Module has one ... var exportedsymbols = getObjectProperty(id,"EXPORTED_SYMBOLS").EXPORTED_SYMBOLS; if (!exportedsymbols) continue;

// Then search for the first declared function
// Which will allow us to get the file of this module!

// Begin to search in EXPORTED_SYMBOLS
var symbols = getObjectProperties(exportedsymbols);
var filename;
for(var i in symbols) {
  var s = getObjectProperty(id,symbols[i])[symbols[i]];
  var inf = getObjectInfo(s);
  if (!inf) continue;
  if (inf.nativeClass=="Function" && inf.filename) {
    filename=inf.filename;
    break;
  } else if (inf.nativeClass="Object") {
    var subprops = getObjectProperties(s);
    for(var j in subprops) {
      var subs = subprops[j];
      var subinf = getObjectInfo(subs);
      if (!subinf) continue;
      if (subinf.nativeClass=="Function" && subinf.filename) {
        filename = subinf.filename;
        break;
      }
    }
    if (filename) break;
  }
}
if (!filename) {
  // Unable to found a function in exported_symbols objects
  // now try to find a function defined in global context
  var table = getObjectTable();
  var count=0;
  for (var subid in table) {
    var subinf = getObjectInfo(parseInt(subid));
    if (subinf && subinf.parent == id && subinf.nativeClass=="Function" && subinf.filename) {
      filename = subinf.filename;
      break;
    }
  }
}
if (filename) {
  var file = filename;
  var res = filename.match(/\/([^\/]+\/[^\/]+\/[^\/]+\.\w+)$/);
  if (res)
    file = decodeURIComponent(res[1]);
  jsmodules.push({
    type  : "jsmodule",
    name  : file,
    file  : filename,
    object: id
  });
} else {
  // we were unable to find any function, we may try to search deeper
}

}

return JSON.stringify(jsmodules); }

function getAllJSModules() { var factory = Components.classes["@labs.mozilla.com/jetpackdi;1"] .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIJetpack); var endpoint = factory.get(); var json = endpoint.profileMemory(searchJSModules.toSource()+" searchJSModules()", "find-jsmodules.js", 1, null); return JSON.parse(json); }



Finally, here is the function which retrieve objects counts for one parent. It use the Jetpack memory profiler XPCOM.

function profileFunction() {
  var namedObjects=getNamedObjects();
  
  // namedObjects["parent"] is null ... why ?!
  var parent;
  for(var i in namedObjects) {
    if (i=="parent") {
      parent = parseInt(namedObjects[i]);
    }
  }
  
  // Remove web content windows js wrapper
  var inf = getObjectInfo(parent);
  if (inf && inf.nativeClass=="XPCSafeJSObjectWrapper") {
    parent = inf.wrappedObject;
  }
  
  var children = {};
  
  // Check every JS object
  var table = getObjectTable();
  for(var i in table) {
    var info = getObjectInfo(parseInt(i));
    
    // Search if this one is related to the selected parent
    // ie walk throught all parents in order to find if the current object is a descendant of selected parent
    if ( info.parent != parent ) {
      var parentMatch = false;
      var p = info.parent;
      while(true) {
        var subinfo = getObjectInfo(p);
        if (!subinfo) break;
        
        if ( subinfo.id == parent || subinfo.parent == parent ) {
          // Answer= Yes
          parentMatch = true;
          break;
        }
        
        // Walk throught encapsulated objects
        if (subinfo.outerObject && subinfo.outerObject!=p) {
          p = subinfo.outerObject;
          continue;
        }
        
        p = subinfo.parent;
      }
      // Answer= Yes
      if (!parentMatch) continue;
    }
    
    if (!children[info.nativeClass])
      children[info.nativeClass] = 0;
    children[info.nativeClass]++;
  }
  
  return JSON.stringify(children);
}
function profileParent(parent) {
  var factory = Components.classes["@labs.mozilla.com/jetpackdi;1"]
               .createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIJetpack);
  var endpoint = factory.get();
  var json = endpoint.profileMemory(profileFunction.toSource()+"
profileFunction()", "profile.js", 1, {parent: parent});
  return JSON.parse(json);
}

More information


Come back for the next blog post to get the 2.0 version :)