Related discussion:
- a0a9497b4a (commitcomment-62560291)
The new setting, when disabled (enabled by default), allows a user
to prevent uBO from waiting for all filter lists to be loaded
before allowing network activity at launch. The setting is enabled
by default, meaning uBO waits for all filter lists to be loaded in
memory before unsuspending network activity. Some users may find
this behavior undesirable, hence the new setting.
This gives the option to potentially speed up page load at launch,
at the cost of potentially not properly filtering network requests
as per filter lists/rules.
For platforms not supporting the suspension of network activity,
the setting will merely prevent whatever mechanism exists on the
platform to mitigate improper filtering of network requests at
launch. For example, in Chromium-based browsers, unchecking the
new setting will prevent the browser from re-loading tabs for
which there was network activity while in "suspended" state at
launch.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1664
The changes are enough to fulfill the related issue.
A new platform has been added in order to allow for building
a NodeJS package. From the root of the project:
./tools/make-nodejs
This will create new uBlock0.nodejs directory in the
./dist/build directory, which is a valid NodeJS package.
From the root of the package, you can try:
node test
This will instantiate a static network filtering engine,
populated by easylist and easyprivacy, which can be used
to match network requests by filling the appropriate
filtering context object.
The test.js file contains code which is typical example
of usage of the package.
Limitations: the NodeJS package can't execute the WASM
versions of the code since the WASM module requires the
use of fetch(), which is not available in NodeJS.
This is a first pass at modularizing the codebase, and
while at it a number of opportunistic small rewrites
have also been made.
This commit requires the minimum supported version for
Chromium and Firefox be raised to 61 and 60 respectively.
Though Firefox shares a lot of WebExtensions code with Chromium,
these platforms have their own specific code paths, for various
reasons.
The reorganization here makes it clear that Chromium platform is
just one flavor of WebExtensions, and as such all Chromium-specific
code paths should no longer be automatically pulled by other
platforms where these code paths are not needed.
Given that the filepath of many files changed, here is the
parent commit to quickly browse back to the previous directory
layout:
ec7db30b2f
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1513
Prior to this commit, the ability to enable/disable the
uncloaking of canonical names was only available to advanced
users. This commit make it so that the setting can be
toggled from the _Settings_ pane.
The setting is enabled by default. The documentation should
be clear that the setting should not be disabled unless it
actually solves serious network issues, for example:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1694404
Also, as a result, the advanced setting `cnameUncloak` is no
longer available from within the advanced settings editor.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/763
Changes:
From now on, uBO will allow click-to-subscribe on only
a few select domains, currently:
- https://filterlists.com/
- https://github.com/
- https://github.io/
More domains can be added if and only the demonstration
is made that more than a marginal number of filter lists
can be subscribed from those domains.
The browser alert box is no longer used to confirm
subscription to a filter list. Instead, the asset
viewer has been expanded to serve that purpose. This
way, users can peruse at the content of a filter list
before subscribing to it.
The pseudo user styles code served only browsers based
on Chromium 65 and earlier -- Chromium 66 supports
native user styles and was first released more than two
years ago.
In Chromium-based browsers, the pseudo user styles code
is being unconditionally injected in every page/frame
just in case the browser is version 65 or earlier.
Removing pseudo user styles reduce uBO's main content
script in Chromium-based browsers by more than 20K.
Related thread:
- https://github.com/NanoAdblocker/NanoCore/issues/348#issuecomment-653646507
The old "classic" popup panel will still be used
when at least one of the following is true:
- advanced setting `uiFlavor` is set to `classic`; or
- the browser is Chromium 65 or older; or
- the browser is Firefox 67 or older
The default configuration of the new popup panel
at installation time is to show the power button,
statistics and the basic tool icons, i.e. access
to dashboard, logger, pickers.
For existing installations, the new popup panel
will be configured by respecting the existing
configuration of the classic one.
The new popup panel is currently already in use
on Firefox for Android, and the visual redesign
was made according to suggestions and feedback
from <https://github.com/brampitoyo> to be
optimal for Firefox for Android.
The new popup panel will allow closing the following
pending issues:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/255
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/178
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/911
Since cname-uncloaking is available only on Firefox
at the moment, the fix is relevant only to Firefox.
By default uBO will no longer cname-uncloak when it
detects that network requests are being being proxied.
This default behavior can be overriden by setting the
new advanced setting `cnameUncloakProxied` to `true`.
The new setting default to `false`, i.e. cname-uncloaking
is disabled when uBO detects that a proxy is in use.
This new advanced setting may disappear once the
following Firefox issue is fixed:
- https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1618271
Advanced setting `cnameAliasList` has been removed.
New advanced settings:
cnameUncloak:
Boolean
Default value:
true
Description:
Whether to CNAME-uncloak hostnames.
cnameIgnoreExceptions:
Boolean
Default value:
true
Description:
Whether to bypass the uncloaking of network requests
which were excepted by filters/rules. This is
necessary so as to avoid undue breakage by having
exception filters being rendered useless as a result
of CNAME-uncloaking.
For example, `google-analytics.com` uncloaks to
`www-google-analytics.l.google.com` and both hostnames
appear in Peter Lowe's list, which means exception
filters for `google-analytics.com` (to fix site
breakage) would be rendered useless as the uncloaking
would cause the network request to be ultimately
blocked.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780
Related commit:
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/commit/3a564c199260
This adds two new advanced settings:
- cnameIgnoreRootDocument
- Default to `true`
- Tells uBO to skip CNAME-lookup for root document.
- cnameReplayFullURL
- Default to `false`
- Tells uBO whether to replay the whole URL or just
the origin part of it.
Replaying only the origin part is meant to lower
undue breakage and improve performance by avoiding
repeating the pattern-matching of the whole URL --
which pattern-matching was most likely already
accomplished with the original request.
This commit is meant to explore enabling CNAME-lookup
by default for the next stable release while:
- Eliminating a development burden by removing the
need to create a new filtering syntax to deal with
undesirable CNAME-cloaked hostnames
- Eliminating a filter list maintainer burden by
removing the need to find/deal with all base
domains which engage in undesirable CNAME-cloaked
hostnames
The hope is that the approach implemented in this
commit should require at most a few unbreak rules
with no further need for special filtering syntax
or filter list maintance efforts.
This fixes the ability to block when a hostname
had to be cname-resolved the first time it was
encountered. The result being cached allowed
the subsequent requests to be correctly blockable.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780
- Handle DNS lookup failure
- Skip DNS lookup for non network-based URLs
- Benchmark code to be able to provide an estimate
based on objective measurements regarding added
overhead when DNS lookup is enabled
(quick answer: a complete non-issue)
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/780
New webext permission added: `dns`, which purpose is
to allow an extension to fetch the DNS record of
specific hostnames, reference documentation:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/dns
The webext API `dns` is available in Firefox 60+ only.
The new API will enable uBO to "uncloak" the actual
hostname used in network requests. The ability is
currently disabled by default for now -- this is only
a first commit related to the above issue to allow
advanced users to immediately use the new ability.
Four advanced settings have been created to control the
uncloaking of actual hostnames:
cnameAliasList: a space-separated list of hostnames.
Default value: unset => empty list.
Special value: * => all hostnames.
A space-separated list of hostnames => this tells uBO
to "uncloak" the hostnames in the list will.
cnameIgnoreList: a space-separated list of hostnames.
Default value: unset => empty list.
Special value: * => all hostnames.
A space-separated list of hostnames => this tells uBO
to NOT re-run the network request through uBO's
filtering engine with the CNAME hostname. This is
useful to exclude commonly used actual hostnames
from being re-run through uBO's filtering engine, so
as to avoid pointless overhead.
cnameIgnore1stParty: boolean.
Default value: true.
Whether uBO should ignore to re-run a network request
through the filtering engine when the CNAME hostname
is 1st-party to the alias hostname.
cnameMaxTTL: number of minutes.
Default value: 120.
This tells uBO to clear its CNAME cache after the
specified time. For efficiency purpose, uBO will
cache alias=>CNAME associations for reuse so as
to reduce calls to `browser.dns.resolve`. All the
associations will be cleared after the specified time
to ensure the map does not grow too large and too
ensure uBO uses up to date CNAME information.
Tabless network requests were bypassing uBO's
onBeforeRequest's listener when in suspended
mode. Suspend mode occurs during the time the
filter lists are all reloaded.
Regression from:
- 1dfdc40e09 (diff-d04c15ee6bff6a6269c6aee25a7c7522R1122)
This works only for platforms supporting the return of
Promise by network listeners, i.e. only Firefox at this
point.
When filter lists are reloaded[1], there is a small
time window in which some network requests which should
have normally been blocked are not being blocked
because the static network filtering engine may not
have yet loaded all the filters in memory
This is now addressed by suspending the network request
handler when filter lists are reloaded -- again, this
works only on supported platforms.
[1] Examples: when a filter list update session
completes; when user filters change, when
adding/removing filter lists.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/416
The Chromium version of uBO has declared `unlimitedStorage` since the
extension was first published in 2014. Declaring this permission in
Firefox brings uBO inline with the Chromium version. I suspect some
reported errors could be caused by IndexedDB eviction due to the lack
of `unlimitedStorage` permission.
Additionally, a timeout has been added when uBO tries to access its
indexedDB storage. It's unclear whether this will help with the
mentioned related issue though, the root cause is still to be
identified.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/407
Both flavors will be stitched together into a single
`vapi-qebrequest.js` file.
The decision of which flavor to use will be made at runtime,
according to the browser environment.
Performance-related work: the logger data has been decoupled
from the DOM -- inspired from CodeMirror's way of efficiently
handling large amout of text data.
This decoupling now makes the logger highly efficient CPU- and
memory-wise, and open the way to more possibilities.
Ability to configure some aspect of the logger behavior and
visuals:
- The hard-coded limit of 5000 entries has been
removed and is now replaced with a variety of
user-configurable settings to enforce the discarding of
logger entries.
- Some columns in the logger output can now be hidden.
The filter list look-up feature has been merged into the
existing overlay dialog used to create URL rules or static
filters, as an entry in a new "Details" pane.
Other issues addressed during refactoring:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/280
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1999
The minimum version supported on Firefox has been bumped
up to 55.0.
