#922431 chromium: URL chrome://tracing does not work any more

Package:
chromium
Source:
chromium
Description:
web browser
Submitter:
Sebastien Helleu
Date:
2021-12-16 17:51:05 UTC
Severity:
minor
Tags:
#922431#5
Date:
2019-02-15 19:44:50 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

With chromium version 72.0.3626.81, the URL chrome://tracing does not work any more.
It displays this error:
-----
This site can’t be reached The webpage at chrome://tracing/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

ERR_INVALID_URL
-----

The extension Lighthouse, depending on this tracing feature does not work any more.
The error is: "Protocol error (Tracing.start): 'Tracing.start' wasn't found".

It is a regression, it was OK with chromium version 72.0.3626.53.

I reported the bug in Chromium bug tracker, but they answered it might be an issue
with Debian packaging (since the same version works fine on Ubuntu).

The chromium bug is: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=931143

#922431#10
Date:
2019-02-16 01:35:40 UTC
From:
To:
Tracing is disabled in debian starting with 72.0.3626.81-1.  Its
implementation relies on many sourceless javascript files.

Best wishes,
Mike

#922431#15
Date:
2019-02-16 07:43:54 UTC
From:
To:
Then maybe the "Audits" tab in DevTools could be removed? (not sure if that's
easy to do that).

Because it seems broken when you try to perform an audit on a site, there's an
error: "Ah, sorry! We ran into an error: Protocol error (Tracing.start):
'Tracing.start' was not found".

I spent many hours to understand it was related to the latest version available
in Debian, so I think this can confuses other people as well.

#922431#22
Date:
2019-06-30 19:30:08 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Michael et al,

you wrote in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=922431#10:

it looks like upstream is at a loss [1] how come you are seeing sourceless
JS files.

Would it be possible to list (or give an example of) JS files, that are
missing source code? Maybe upstream can help if they know what file you
are referring to?

Thanks,
*t

[1] https://github.com/GoogleChrome/lighthouse/issues/7246#issuecomment-485432683)

#922431#31
Date:
2019-07-31 13:18:19 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

any changes on this? The tracing and the auditing tools are very helpful
in website/webapps development. Would be nice to get them working again.

@mike: If any help to find the sources is required, just name them and i
am going to find them.

Thanks
Sascha

#922431#36
Date:
2019-08-03 00:57:37 UTC
From:
To:
The sourceless files are in third_party/catapult/tracing, which is now
stripped out of the debian source package.

Best wishes,
Mike

#922431#41
Date:
2019-08-03 20:35:16 UTC
From:
To:
Looking through
http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-official/chromium-76.0.3809.71-lite.tar.xz
(the file that appears to be fetched in debian/rules), I'm seeing a few
minified .js files in third_party/catapult/tracing/third_party; are these
the ones you're talking about? I just want to make sure I'm getting it
right so we can work with upstream to get sources shipped properly.

Thanks,
-Andrew

#922431#46
Date:
2019-11-12 08:43:38 UTC
From:
To:

I'm not a Maintainer, but I can respond here.

Minified files are compiled files. Without the source and the compilation
instructions, those files can not be shipped in a debian packages.

So yes, if you could obtain source of all minified javascript files included
in chromium upstream packages, those files should then appear in a package
built by debian.

(Of course, their license should be compatible with debian requirements
about licences)

#922431#51
Date:
2021-12-14 21:13:23 UTC
From:
To:
According to my colleague, some wrong assumptions were made about the
Tracing devtools protocol. Mainly, it is not related to `chrome://tracing`,
but is used by tools like Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, and other things
that use the Chrome DevTools Protocol. You were right to drop
`third_party/catapult/tracing/third_party`
because of those assets being minified, but the "Tracing" devtools protocol
should not be removed. Please see this comment for more:

https://github.com/GoogleChrome/lighthouse/issues/7246#issuecomment-548015096