While running some test in the framework of Bug 1733966, it was noticed that Activity Manager is not always showing activity while status bar shows message being downloaded or if it does at some point it slow down in the process and appear stuck for a long while... or progressing very slowly...

In various version of TB there seems to be recurring console errors related to the Activity Manager e.g NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE - ActivityManager.jsm see full details attached.

Activity Manager may need some love and attention :-)

Here is an extract of such error:
NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE: ActivityManager.jsm:135
getActivity resource:///modules/ActivityManager.jsm:135
removeActivity resource:///modules/ActivityManager.jsm:84
onFolderRemovedFromQ resource:///modules/activity/autosync.jsm:247
_timerCallback resource:///modules/AppIdleManager.jsm:30

More available in the attached file...

Rather pointless error which we could clean up yes. No real functional impact.

Pushed by mkmelin@iki.fi:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/246be8ca932f
activity manager: don't throw on missing thing to remove, when removing. r=henry

(In reply to Worcester12345 from comment #4)

No real sense in having an "activity manager" at all, if it doesn't work correctly. I'd say just remove anything related to it and be done with it then.

I would say it is a really good concept, and it needs fixing, so it does show what the program is sitting there consuming CPU cycles doing. I have sat watching Thunderbird consume huge amounts of memory and ticking away on CPU for long periods of time. But there is no way to look in and find out what is consuming the cycles. I think it is gloda, but really it is not clear. I feel it is unfortunate that Thunderbird can not actually report on what it is doing. Things like determining what to index for 20 minutes are not helpful either.

Actually being able to see low level logging somehow and such cases for debugging would be useful, but what we have atm does nothing of the sort... I agree it's pretty much useless as is.

Thank you for fixing the error.
Do you think it would help the performance issues as observed and reported in the pdf file (user story)?

Improving usage of Activity Manager would a must to provide basic info to end-user when something is processing in TB (loading email, loading calendar, indexing, copying, moving, sending email, looking for folder, etc... or any action that would cause a blue wheel in the title bar).

This would help to provide a hint what to look for when something goes wrong... then you could also have console log/info or else to indicate the issue (it is great by the way that smtp issues are now logged in the console, much more accessible). Finally Firefox provide the about:performance (aka Task Manager) and about:serviceworkers both accessible via the Troubleshooting page... which may also be handy to populate with what Thunderbird is doing... are those in use? When I look it all seems empty...

It could be a start to better processing transparency in TB... which is a great benefit of using open source software... you can always know what they do... especially when something goes wrong... to help report it... and have it fixed...at some point :-)

(In reply to Richard Leger from comment #7)

Improving usage of Activity Manager would a must to provide basic info to end-user when something is processing in TB

Fyi, I created a separate enhancement request Bug 1742064 for the matter...

I doubt this fix did anything except removed some console spew.
Those about pages are accessible in Thunderbird as well - check Troubleshoot information