Bug 45514 – AX: Add methods used to prevent a Chromium renderer crash

• Component: Accessibility
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Chris Guillory]

Currently the Chromium renderer crashes in WebCore accessibility code when retrieving properties from a AccessibilityRenderObject that has a null m_renderer (which is invalid). 
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=54973
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=47126
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=52538

The issues that lead to a null m_renderer should be tackled. However, instead of crashing on release builds let's the ignore the invalid objects and leave them out of Chromium's accessibility tree. The change adds the methods needed to prevent crashes.

[Chris Guillory]

Created attachment 67143 [details]
Add methods to WebAccessibilityObject in Chromium port

[Dimitri Glazkov (Google)]

Comment on attachment 67143 [details]
Add methods to WebAccessibilityObject in Chromium port

View in context: https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=67143&action=prettypatch

I feel like we're doing some bad, bad things here. Why are we checking for validity of the renderer? Shouldn't the AX tree take care of this?

> WebKit/chromium/src/WebAccessibilityObject.cpp:342
> +        return 0;
return false;

> WebKit/chromium/src/WebAccessibilityObject.cpp:351
> +        return 0;
return false;

[Chris Guillory]

The webcore AX tree does try to take care of this but we still end up in this state somehow and each time it happens the Chromium renderer crashes as we build up the entire accessibility tree.

Some previous issues in this area have been identified/fixed.
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44352
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42309
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44149

The new crashes in versions of Chromium that support keeping the tree up-to-date are more difficult to identify. This is one alternative to crashing.

[chris fleizach]

Comment on attachment 67143 [details]
Add methods to WebAccessibilityObject in Chromium port

how are you going to use isRendererValid()
will you also account for non render objects?

[Chris Guillory]

Yes, I'd ignore AccessibilityObject instance that are an AccessibilityRenderObject without a valid renderer. 
http://codereview.chromium.org/3356016/show

[Chris Guillory]

Let's not go here right now.