1127907 - Investigate use of "gather-telemetry" notification

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Telemetry, defect, P4)

Description

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Bug 1122066 introduces a proper collection mechanism for telemetry data that is not constantly pushed.

We need to port the few users of "gather-telemetry" over to that:
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=gather-telemetry

Comment 1

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Morphing this into an investigation what the existing users of "gather-telemetry" need and whether we can e.g. just switch them to pushing their data to Telemetry instead.

Comment 2

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Background on the mobile use of this notification from bug 1208167:

(Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from bug 1208167, comment #16)
> (In reply to Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche] from bug 1208167, comment #15)
> > What do you need "gather-telemetry" for?
> > That notification was never really useful and only a few old pieces of code
> > use it.
> > 
> > If you are looking to display the current state of your probe you can e.g.
> > view it in about:telemetry and just reload the page to update the values.
> 
> Mobile currently uses "gather-telemetry" as a trigger to send a message to
> Java and collect some Java-side probes:
> https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/base/
> BrowserApp.java#1642
> 
> This bug is a similar type of probe, but on the JS side.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

When does gather-telemtry run?  Do we ensure to only run it at idle times?

Comment 4

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari (super long backlog, slow to respond) from comment #3)
> When does gather-telemtry run?  Do we ensure to only run it at idle times?

Yes, "gather-telemetry" is fired on "idle-daily":
https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/17d8a1e278a9c54a6fdda9d390abce4077e55b20/toolkit/components/telemetry/TelemetrySession.jsm#1988

Comment 5

[Benjamin Smedberg]

that is: irregularly and not reliably attached to a telemetry session.