1468368 - Disable android single locale builds in favor of a non shipping multi locale build

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Release Engineering :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

So, in discussion with :Pike the l10n team is ok if we disable single locale android builds in favor of a multi locale build that has all languages that we don't yet officially ship. 

This is driven by releng and imagined to simplify many codepaths used by our android l10n codepaths.

This may spin out to other bugs, but in here a ni to Pike to officially sign off on it as an l10n team representative that this is ok. 

Specifically:
* ok to stop updating single local builds
* ok to stop uploading single local builds to archive.m.o
* ok to not offer updates to the new multi build via balrog (we may offer this anyway, just checking on ok if we don't)
* new multi build is en-US + locales not in our Google play shipping product 
* new multi local build will run at least once a day on central only (nightlies) possibly twice a day.

Pike, plan ok?

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

* ok to not offer updates to the new multi build via balrog (we may offer this anyway, just checking on ok if we don't)

I think we actually do want updates on this build, the testers for this build shouldn't have to manually download. 

The rest is fine.

Comment 2

[Delphine Lebédel [:delphine - Use needinfo]]

(In reply to Axel Hecht (Back on June 28) [:Pike] from comment #1)
> * ok to not offer updates to the new multi build via balrog (we may offer
> this anyway, just checking on ok if we don't)
> 
> I think we actually do want updates on this build, the testers for this
> build shouldn't have to manually download. 
> 

+1 to this. We really need automatic updates.

> The rest is fine.
+1

Comment 3

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

:nalexander, :rstrong,

So in looking into what is required from my end for this, I notice that the only balrog entries for Android are from single-locale builds (the .multi. gets pointed at by the en-US build)...

Can you both help me with two tidbits, #1 where/how does the updater for android get enabled, and #2 what does a multi-locale build (running in say, french) report as the update language?

I want to make sure that whatever I do here allows us to update these users outside of Google Play as per requirements above.

Comment 4

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

The Android updater stopped using app update several years ago and I don't have any knowledge of how the Android code accomplishes updating using balrog.

Comment 5

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

Delphine,

So per a chat with :rstrong I'm not even sure if single locale has updates right now (if it does, I think I need more info from <someone> on how that works)

Given this can you either point me at a human who can help with figuring out the current state of how updates are handled on these builds (that are not part of Google Play) - OR confirm that we don't need to figure out how to update these sets of users as part of shutting off single-locale?

4:20 PM <rstrong> Callek: Android reused the MOZ_UPDATER define https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152634
4:20 PM <firebot> Bug 1152634 — REOPENED, [e-mail] — Use a new build define instead of re-purposing MOZ_UPDATER
4:21 PM <rstrong> I also had to add not android to the app update build config because of this
4:21 PM <rstrong> https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/moz.build#23
4:21 PM <rstrong> So, it doesn't build app update

Comment 6

[Delphine Lebédel [:delphine - Use needinfo]]

I've had only one localizer reaching out to me saying she hasn't got updates for a while (see Bug 1471738).

Since this has been defined as a first step and part of the plan to drop single-locales, I don't think we need to figure out how to fix this (also given how few people seemed to have been bothered by this).

Comment 7

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

So to recap an IRC convo we had today.

It appears that there is no single-locale update story today, they have not been working outside of Google Play since sometime in 2015 (when we stopped building the Gecko Updater for android).

Delphine/Pike are OK with proceeding as planned then without an update story for these "not shipped via GP" locales in a multi-locale form, [we'll move ahead with disabling single locale before we solve that]

There remains the desire to offer these users updates, however what route we go in to provide that will be mostly up to Engineering with consultation by affected teams (like releng) and may rely on dev cycles that have not been committed. (As in, we may need someone to make the gecko updater work with Nightly again, without degrading an experience for GP users of Nightly).

Things around Fennec and Updates could change as more concrete plans and timelines form around other Mobile Products/Features.

This was discussed in IRC on #l10n

2:44 PM <delphine> Ok so to sum up: I think 1. yes it's ok short term with what you mention above (disabling single locale in favor of multi-locale etc without having the update srtoy solved)
2:45 PM <delphine> and 2. Yes we do have users who don't want GP (I have no idea how many there are, but I know this comes up regularly for other mobile test builds)
2:49 PM <delphine> and I don't think there are a lot TBH (that don't want to go through GP). Or that still use those single-locale builds
2:56 PM <delphine> Lemme know if that answers everything you needed / makes sense - I'm gonna grab some lunch but we can jump on a call if that's easier right after
3:03 PM <Callek> delphine: I think that answers my immediate needs, yes. I suspect further needs will play out as we start talking Fenix more and related products, as well as the general Mobile roadmaps fall into place

Comment 8

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him] (PTO Feb 24-March 3)]

(In reply to Justin Wood (:Callek) from comment #3)
> :nalexander, :rstrong,

I am not expert in this area.  snorp and jchen know more than I do.

> So in looking into what is required from my end for this, I notice that the
> only balrog entries for Android are from single-locale builds (the .multi.
> gets pointed at by the en-US build)...
> 
> Can you both help me with two tidbits, #1 where/how does the updater for
> android get enabled,

I believe it is never present for our actual multi-locale builds that ship to users via Google Play.

 and #2 what does a multi-locale build (running in say,
> french) report as the update language?

This might be complicated.  There's an `update.locale` mechanism that is hack-y as hell, and a pref that I believe is related.  I do not know for sure that the pref is relevant for update locales, but I dumped what I found about the build-system side of things in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1428099#c3.

> I want to make sure that whatever I do here allows us to update these users
> outside of Google Play as per requirements above.

I don't think we have builds that support this.  And we shouldn't invest effort into supporting this in general.

Comment 9

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

I believe it is never present for our actual multi-locale builds that ship to users via Google Play.

Not quite - the updater is enabled build-config wise, but turns itself off at runtime if it detects that the APK was installed from the Plays Store.

Comment 10

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

found in triage, we no longer ship any single locale builds