1357362 - Phase out current Fennec nightly updater

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Android partner distribution, enhancement)

Description

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

After project dawn we'll be using google play for updates, so the updater path will be no longer necessary.

Comment 1

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

MozillaOnline is using the updater and there are cases where people do not have Google Play.

We can not assume that everyone has Google Play services...

Comment 2

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Also, I'm pretty sure the single locale builds use the updater as well.

Comment 3

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

Max, Joe,
So maybe we can't really kill this path. 
And is it still a valid assumption that we will deploy nightly through google play only?

Comment 4

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

I think we'll need to change the summary to make it clear once we confirm how we're going to handle.

Comment 5

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

Good point about MozillaOnline. let me chat with them to see what the impact is and I suspect they are hosting their own servers?

The key is the move the existing nightly users to download the "new" nightly with the aurora package name (either thru Google Play or our FTP) so we can phase out the nightly with "nightly" package name. 

With the "new" nightly, since we have to pick one method to update most users, Google Play will be the update method and hence the proposal to make sure no new updates will show up through the updater. This can be done either on the client side or server side. 

It looks like in this case, it's better to keep the updater capability on the client side and as long as we don't provide new builds through updater on the server side, users won't get notified twice (thru Google Play & updater) for the same update.

Comment 6

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Our current Aurora builds [1] can already detect that they've been installed through the Play Store and turn off the inbuilt updater in that case, so I'm not sure why we'd have to completely stop serving updates for users who haven't gone through the Play Store. Also what about single-locale builds?

The only thing that's missing in the UI is doing something about the update check button in about:firefox. At the moment it's only hidden if the updater was disabled through the build config - we could think about redirecting a click on it to our Play Store listing if we've been installed from the Play Store (compare bug 800397 comment 17).

[1] and presumably Nightly as well, only that so far we've never offered Nightly via the Play Store.

Comment 7

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

(In reply to Jan Henning [:JanH] from comment #6)
> Our current Aurora builds [1] can already detect that they've been installed
> through the Play Store and turn off the inbuilt updater in that case, so I'm
> not sure why we'd have to completely stop serving updates for users who
> haven't gone through the Play Store. Also what about single-locale builds?
> 

Thanks for the comment. This is something I missed. Aurora indeed can be updated either via Play Store or thru updater.
Then this changes my thought. We could likely do the same.
Based on my own test, single-locale build behaves the same that it could be updated through either Play Store or our updater. Although after an update (through either channel), the build seems to have become a multi-locale build.

> The only thing that's missing in the UI is doing something about the update
> check button in about:firefox. At the moment it's only hidden if the updater
> was disabled through the build config - we could think about redirecting a
> click on it to our Play Store listing if we've been installed from the Play
> Store (compare bug 800397 comment 17).
> 

based on what I'm seeing with a aurora build that I downloaded from FTP, in the about page, when I check for updates, the updates will be downloaded from our updater. it could stay the same as it will serve those who doesn't have Google Play or who wishes not to download from Google Play

Comment 8

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

(In reply to Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo) from comment #7)
> > The only thing that's missing in the UI is doing something about the update
> > check button in about:firefox. At the moment it's only hidden if the updater
> > was disabled through the build config - we could think about redirecting a
> > click on it to our Play Store listing if we've been installed from the Play
> > Store (compare bug 800397 comment 17).
> > 
> 
> based on what I'm seeing with a aurora build that I downloaded from FTP, in
> the about page, when I check for updates, the updates will be downloaded
> from our updater. it could stay the same as it will serve those who doesn't
> have Google Play or who wishes not to download from Google Play

Sure, but what I mean is - if we've been installed through Google Play, we are prohibited from using our own updater by Google's TOS. In that case clicking on the button doesn't do anything (or at least it shouldn't - can't test it right now), hence the idea to turn it into a link to our Play Store listing in that case. For users that installed the APK through other means, the button would of course continue hooking into our own updater.

Comment 9

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

given that we are all on the same page to keep the upater, let's close this bug and continue discussion in bug 1357351