1507846 - Consider about:telemetry equivalent for Glean

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Data Platform and Tools :: Glean: SDK, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

Based on a conversation about data QA & testing, something similar to about:telemetry might be useful.

It would clearly be helpful to devs (compared to manual logging or setting breakpoints).
QA might also use it, but that is less clear so far.

Follow-up conversations needed.

Comment 1

[Alessio Placitelli [:Dexter]]

about:telemetry is currently exposed by Gecko to Fenix and FFTV. This means that users are able to navigate to that page and get partial/incomplete/misleading info about telemetry in Gecko, which does not include data from Glean (it can't possibly know about that).

Given that about:telemetry is meant for engineering support, and that we have the debug view, does it make sense to keep exposing that page?

Comment 2

[Chris H-C :chutten]

For reference: 2 months ago there was as-yet-undetermined support planned for about: pages in general.

Comment 3

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

Given that about:telemetry is meant for engineering support, and that we have the debug view, does it make sense to keep exposing that page?

• From a data perspective, it looks like the probes are documented so I suppose exposing the page is not necessary
• From a FFTV perspective, it doesn't use GV yet so we can disable it there
• From a Fenix perspective, I don't have the context to make a call but I assume most users don't use it

As an alternative solution to the problem (that users may be mislead that Glean's data is missing), we could add a reference to the Glean debug view/data on the about:telemetry home tab to direct users. However, users may be annoyed by the split-nature of our telemetry view.

Comment 4

[Chris H-C :chutten]

To be absolutely clear, about:telemetry is not required to meet any data stewardship or privacy requirement in our products. It's helpful as an engineering/qa tool and is kinda neat to show users sometimes, but it's not necessary.

Considering that about:telemetry shows an incorrect picture of what data is collected and in what shape it is reported, I'm in favour of turning it off entirely in geckoview.