1520248 - Disable the app updater in nightly builds

Status: NEW

(Firefox Build System :: Android Studio and Gradle Integration, defect, P5)

Description

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

The app updater is enabled in android nightly builds and nowhere else. It sounds like we don't use it anymore and reducing the build config differences between nightly and beta would reduce the issues found at merge time.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I heard that there are single-locale builds that may still need this?

Comment 2

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] (he/him) from comment #1)

I heard that there are single-locale builds that may still need this?

Currently the single locale builds do want this, however single locale build updates are also broken for other reasons. I am seeking some more information in side channels right now on if we can do away with the desire of updates via sideload installs at the moment.

I'll circle back here once I have an answer to that sideload-update discussion.

Comment 3

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

If users go to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/android/nightly/all/ they get builds using the self updater. There is a contingent of users who want nothing to do with Google and the self updater provides a way to make sure they are up to date. There are also devices that do not ship with Google Play store such as the Amazon Fire tablets.

Comment 4

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

Tracking to keep an eye on the discussion for 66.

Comment 5

[Andreas Bovens [:abovens]]

Is there an interest in allowing other beta and GA to use the self updater as well? (that would "solve" the problem in the opposite direction)

Comment 6

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

1. Making sure we don't run afoul of the Google Play policies about self updating apps. We have code to handle this case but need to make sure that the logic is correct. bug 1220773 implemented this feature. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/google-bans-self-updating-android-apps-possibly-including-facebooks/

2. Be careful with the user's mobile data. We currently display an Android notification about the availability of updates and if the user taps on it ~50 MB of the user's data is consumed. Might need a warning before downloading the update when on a mobile network or some other UX change to be kind to the user's data costs.

See bug 1192279 for some previous discussion on making the self updating work on Beta/Release.

Comment 7

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

FWIW the problem that caused me to file this in the first place would also be solved by building (maybe testing?) android with the updater disabled on m-c in CI.

Comment 8

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

(In reply to Dave Townsend [:mossop] (he/him) from comment #7)

FWIW the problem that caused me to file this in the first place would also be solved by building (maybe testing?) android with the updater disabled on m-c in CI.

In Bug 1419581 I added a --without-google-play-services build to ensure we didn't regress a particular build configuration. That configuration is not "without Google Play Store installation/update support", it's without GCM/ChromeCast/etc support (and without tracking/marketing APIs). The target audience is F-Droid. I think making that build disable the updater would be reasonable, since anybody consuming such a configuration will also want their own updater support (since Mozilla won't be updating for them).

File against that ticket if you want it? It seems very low priority, though.

Comment 9

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Probably should have commented. I'm un-assigning myself from this since it doesn't sound like there is a consensus to proceed right now and I'm quite busy and my interest in this is purely to avoid compile/test issues at merge time. Feel free to assign it to me if we decide to proceed and there isn't anyone on the mobile team more qualified!

Comment 10

[Justin Wood (:Callek)]

:Mossop, per https://github.com/mozilla-releng/releng-rfcs/pull/13 and Bug 1524394 Fennec is no longer being submitted to Balrog. Did you want to own doing this work?

Comment 11

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

For clarity since this was brought up on irc today, Android has its own update mechanism that doesn't use any of the Toolkit -> Application Update code.

Comment 12

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to Justin Wood (:Callek) from comment #10)

:Mossop, per https://github.com/mozilla-releng/releng-rfcs/pull/13 and Bug 1524394 Fennec is no longer being submitted to Balrog. Did you want to own doing this work?

I'm probably too busy for the next little while to take this.

Comment 13

[sjw]

I just wanted to file a bug while stumbling over this. The current state looks broken for users, because Nightly reports that "no updates are available" without any hint that the updater has been removed.
Please consider bug 1192279 as blocker for this. It's very uncomfortable to download Nightly manually multiple times a day and current installations remain outdated without user interaction.

Comment 14

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

At this point I think we'll say this is P5: I'd take a patch, probably, although the testing burden is so high that we might not even take just a patch. Generally this isn't relevant to GV consumers, I hope, and therefore somebody else can probably WONTFIX this.