Treestyletab: Tree structure lost after session restore

[Zer0t3ch]

Short description

Tree structure is flat after session restore in FF57 with TST 2

Steps to reproduce

1. Start Firefox with clean profile.
2. Install TST.
3. Open some tabs
4. Restart

Expected result

Tree should retain structure

Actual result

Tree doesn't retain structure

Environment

• Platform (OS): Windows 10
• Version of Firefox: FF57 (Beta)
• Version (or revision) of Tree Style Tab: 2.0.4

[Zer0t3ch]

Basically the same as #260, but I figured I'd open a new issue as that one was about a completely different codebase, before the rewrite.

[piroor]

This doesn't happen for me. I've verified on:

• Windows 10 Creators Update
• Firefox 57.0b7
• TST 2.0.4

[piroor]

I think there are some possible triggers, for example:

• Number of tabs. I'm not tested with too many tabs.
• Contents of tabs. Something special pages possibly break TST's session restoration.

[leinadlime]

I have the same issue, storing 300-900 tabs.
It happens most times with 200-300 tabs and above.

After a crash, one of the first parent tabs are killed,
and all the children become toplevel.

There is the same bug happening, when moving a parent with many tabs.

I don't know how to reproduce this. Maybe with some tool like sessionmanager (not working anymore in quantum...), which could save the state before the crash, so I could share it?

Update:
firefox-developer-version: 58.0b1 (64-bit)
treetabstyle 2.1.2

[brianhlin]

I seem to have experienced this issue after updates to firefox (firefox-58.0.1-1.fc27.x86_64) running TST 2.4.8. I have a few pinned tabs but otherwise don't have many tabs (<100).

[brianhlin]

This is happening on a regular basis for me. Is there some kind of debugging information that I can provide to help find the cause?

[madduck]

For me it happens not when I restart the browser, but if the browser dies (i.e. the laptop runs out of power) and then i start it again and restore the session, the entire tree structure is gone.

(FF58, TST 2.4.8)

[antoinepouille]

I confirm having the same issue here: if the browser dies, the tab structure is gone and I have to re-build it by hand, which is really tedious.
I'm on Mac OS, firefox 57.0.4, TST 2.4.17

[toadjaune]

(Not sure if https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/260 or https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/1466 are more relevant)

Roughly the same issue here, except that it does not happen all the time : the tree structure is lost only in case of crash of my desktop environment, and even then, not every time.
Everything is fine if I close Firefox myself, if I shut my computer down, or even if I killall -9 firefox

I'm on Fedora 27 (with Wayland), Firefox 58.0.2 (64-bit), TST 2.4.17.

I've seen a debug section in the options, is there any kind of log we can provide to help spotting what's happening ?

[YodaEmbedding]

As @piroor mentioned, I think the biggest culprit is the number of tabs.

• Number of tabs. After >70 tabs, I start getting strange behavior in tab ordering.
• Contents of tabs. I think this is less likely. I visit pretty much the same websites and TST still misbehaves after a certain number of tabs.

Actually, it might have to do with going over one screen height in tabs. That is, when the scroll bar appears:

Or perhaps when using custom CSS styles?

[ssokolow]

Number of tabs. After >70 tabs, I start getting strange behavior in tab ordering.

Huh. So that's why I'm getting the tab reordering bugs I've been reticent to report for lack of a set of steps to reproduce?

[TheBrain0110]

Just adding my report - I just had Firefox crash (MacOS, FF v60b12) and on session restore with ~250 tabs, they were all unsorted and top level, no tree structure.

Is there no backup of the TST session data saved? Then we could try and restore it...

I think the issue might be due to after a crash, Firefox opens an empty window with the option to restore your session or not, and then if you do, it reopens all your old tabs. But that's different from a normal non-crash session restore, and maybe TST sees the blank session first, and then when all the old tabs get opened it doesn't have structure associated with them?

[Ainoss]

Also had similar issue. I closed window with ~350tabs, most of which was unloaded yet. There was another windows of FF, and I click Alt -> journal -> recently closed windows -> select closed window.
Restored windows have flat structure except of few trees, which I used just before close (as I remember). Seems that only unloaded tabs forget their structure. ( .tabs.discarded)
Full FF restart and addon reload doesn't help.

Pretty annoying issue, but in other addon is great!

[Aymkdn]

It happened to me too. Restarting Firefox didn't work... I went thru several other open issues about the same topic, but it seems there is no solution so far ?

[mrwensveen]

I get this too, sometimes, when the browser crashes and I click on the 'Restore previous session' button. The workaround that works for me, is to Disable and Enable TST under Add-ons.

This also means that the information is not actually lost, but just isn't passed to TST at the right time or something like that.

[ddlatham]

Happened to me on Windows 10, when the computer was restarted without closing Firefox, but Firefox did not crash. About 50 tabs opened at the time.

[jtiemer]

Happens on FF ESR, Arch Linux current, TST 2.5.4, in conjunction with Tab Session Manager and around 80 tabs open. Session is restored, tab order is restored, tree structure was lost.

[UmlauteUeberall]

Happens on all my 3 Windows 7 Machines with Waterfox and on the Windows 10 Laptop.
It happens more often when more Tabs are open. (<500 Tabs were usual for one Session, in conjunction with sessionmanager)

[jduan]

This happens to me as well when FF crashes and I choose to restore previous session.

@mrwensveen for your workaround, do you do it after your click the "restore previous session" button or before? I tried it myself and it didn't seem to work. Thanks!

[mrwensveen]

I do it after restoring the session. It doesn't always work, especially when there are multiple windows in the same session, but it usually does.

[jduan]

Thanks @mrwensveen . When I have multiple windows (each window has multiple tabs), sometimes TST wouldn't work for some windows when I choose to restore previous ession.

[piroor]

Tree restoration for sessions restored with the "Restore Previous Session" command may unstable due to restrictions of WebExtensions API. On my environment, Firefox's options => "General" => "Startup" => "Restore previous session" looks more stable. If you always restore previous session, I recommend you to use the option.

[jduan]

@piroor thanks for sharing the trick! Will give that a try for sure.

[piroor]

I close this because outdated.

[mdeguzis]

Still happening for me.

[piroor]

@mdeguzis The initial report is about TST 2.0.4 on Firefox 57. Could you describe versions information on your case and steps to reproduce the problem on my environment? If you provide me the firefox user profile on your environment, it will help my debugging extremely.

[felixbecker2]

Same here. And it has to do with _some_ option I made in the Tree Style Tabs preferences.

I started over with a fresh profile, installed just Tree Style Tabs and in about:preferences checked the option General → Startup → Restore previous session.

Then Tree Style Tabs restored it's tree normally.

Then I imported into that Tree Style Tabs my custom config, and then Tree Style Tabs flattend it's tree after a restart.

I attach (tst-custom-config.json.txt) my exported Tree Style Tab config here -- maybe someone with more insight in it can see which option(s) might be problematic?

Does this report help?

About my system:

• Happens already with just a few tabs (tested with 5 and 8).
• Firefox developer edition, version 89.0b8 (64-bit), on Arch/ Artix Linux (Arch Linux' binary package installed).
• "Tree Style Tab" installed from mozilla's addon repository, version from 2021-05-06, from → here. I don't know how to see the version.

---

Attachments:

• tst-custom-config.json.txt