1357288 - built-in updater is disabled in Fennec 53

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Bingqing Li]

Attachment: 53.png

1. Install Firefox for Android 53 RC build1
   apks: http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/candidates/53.0-candidates/build1/android-api-15/

2. Launch Firefox for Android 53, and open about:firefox
   ==> No update button there.(pls refer to the attachment)
       But we can see update button in older version, e.g. 52.0.2.

Comment 1

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

The updater isn't enabled on Beta and Release, so the button shouldn't have ever been appearing on about:firefox in the first place.
Given that on Nightly - where the updater is enabled - the button is still appearing as usual, there's probably nothing to be done here.

It's a bit of a mystery what caused it to disappear, though - I've checked the 53 Beta and there, the button <div>s in about.xhtml are actually missing from the source code, indicating that they were excluded because of the #ifdef MOZ_UPDATER preprocessor directive (https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a374c35469935a874fefe64d3e07003fc5bc8884/mobile/android/chrome/content/about.xhtml#32).

I don't see anything obvious that has changed there - our mozconfigs continue passing --enable-updater as they did before (https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=path%3Amobile+enable-updater&redirect=false), and at the same time our release branding configure files (https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=path%3Amobile*configure+MOZ_UPDATER) continue unsetting it. Did something change in our build process so previously --enable-updater had precedence and now it's "MOZ_UPDATER=" that gets priority, or something else...?

Comment 2

[Aki Sasaki (not active)]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: We switched to using the nightly mozconfigs for Fennec beta and release during the TC migration. We updated these mozconfigs for branding etc, but they don't have the updater enabled.

It's not clear to me if we want the updater on, but if we do, we should do so for 53+.

Comment 3

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Enabling the updater for non-Play Store Release/Beta builds would be something like bug 1192279 or 1019724 - as long as the button is inoperable anyway, I don't think there's any harm in hiding the button on those builds.

Comment 4

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

If I understand this right, this means that in Fennec when you go to the "about" screen in settings, there isn't a button any more to check for updates. And, it also would mean we don't get update pings sent to balrog (not sure if the button being hidden means that we don't send the update ping, but here I think you're saying both things are true.)    

So, right now I want to make sure we figure out if anyone is expecting the update ping data from balrog.

Comment 5

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

From further discussions: This should only matter for single-locale users and it is controlled through a MOZ_UPDATER setting which hides the button as part of turning off the update check/ping. Most single locale users should be aurora users (now nightly) from new locales. I'm not clear yet whether we have release channel single-locale users.

Comment 6

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

It does not sound like we expect users to be downloading single-locale Fennec builds at all on release. They would only do so from our ftp directory, https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/ ).  I'm going to figure that if they did that, they can go download it again to update. 

I'll track this for now, but will likely wontfix it after we release 53 later this week.

Comment 7

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Are we going to keep wontfixing this? If so let's just wontfix the entire bug. Joe, is it your decision as product manager for Fennec, or someone else's?

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I think we at least have to WONTFIX this because MozillaOnline is still using this updater right now.

Comment 10

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Note: Android used to use the in repo application update code and --enable-updater and MOZ_UPDATER is used to enable that component. When Android decided to no longer use it a new define should have been created (see bug 1152634).