gecko-dev/remote/doc/Usage.md

Usage
=====

When using the CDP-based remote debugger in Firefox, there are
three different programs/components running simultaneously:

  * the __client__, being the out-of-process script or library
    (such as Puppeteer) or web inspector frontend you use to control
    and retrieve information out of Firefox;

  * the __agent__ that the client connects to which is an HTTPD living
    inside Firefox, facilitating communication between clients
    and targets;

  * and the __target__, which is the web document being debugging.

The remote agent ships in [Firefox Nightly] only.

To check if your Firefox binary has the remote agent enabled, you
can look in its help message for this:

	% ./firefox -h
	…
	  --remote-debugging-port <port>
	  --remote-debugger [<host>][:<port>] Start the Firefox remote agent, which is
	                     a low-level debugging interface based on the CDP protocol.
	                     Defaults to listen on localhost:9222.
	…

When used, the remote agent will start an HTTP server and print a
message on stderr with the location of the main target’s WebSocket
listener:

	% firefox --remote-debugger
	DevTools listening on ws://localhost:9222/devtools/browser/7b4e84a4-597f-4839-ac6d-c9e86d16fb83

As you will tell from the flag description, `--remote-debugger`
takes an optional address spec as input:

	[<host>][:<port>]

You can use this to instruct the remote agent to bind to a particular
interface and port on your system.  Either host and port are optional,
which means `./firefox --remote-debugger` will bind the HTTPD to
the default `localhost:9222`.

Other examples of address specs include:

	localhost:9222
	127.0.0.1:9999
	[::1]:4567
	:0

The use of `localhost` in the first example above will, depending
on whether the system supports IPv6, bind to both IP layers and
accept incoming connections from either IPv4 or IPv6.  The second
(`127.0.0.1`) and third (`[::1]`) examples will, respectively,
force the HTTP to listen on IPv4 or IPv6.

The fourth example will use the default hostname, `localhost`, to
listen on all available IP layers, but override the default port
with the special purpose port 0.  When you ask the remote agent to
listen on port 0, the system will atomically allocate an arbitrary
free port.

Allocating an atomic port can be useful if you want to avoid race
conditions.  The atomically allocated port will be somewhere in the
ephemeral port range, which varies depending on your system and
system configuration, but is always guaranteed to be free thus
eliminating the risk of binding to a port that is already in use.

[Firefox Nightly]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/channel/desktop/#nightly