1614087 - Make user-testing builds that migrate prefs and the default search engine

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, task, P1)

Description

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Attachment: patch.diff

I spent some time this week and last making some builds of Firefox for Verdi that he could give to a focus group to try out our recent search changes. Mike suggested I file a bug so that this work is (was) tracked and pointed, even though it's not work that will land anywhere. I'll jot down some relevant info too in case it's helpful in the future.

Verdi pointed me to this repo from bgrins: https://github.com/bgrins/firefox-user-testing-helpers

I followed the self-extracting exe instructions, but following them as written produced a Firefox that said something like "Couldn't find profile folder". What fixed it was clicking the "newer versions" link and then downloading this file: https://bitbucket.org/muldersoft/7zsd.sfx-mod/src/8571e5c45b48ecbf5b0740ffe5301722223540d9/bin/x64/7zSD_asInvoker.sfx

I deleted the 7zS.sfx file and replaced the instance of "7zS.sfx" in build-installer-migrate-data.bat with "7zSD_asInvoker.sfx", and the re-ran the instructions, and that worked. (At first I renamed 7zSD_asInvoker.sfx to 7zS.sfx so I wouldn't have to modify the bat file, but that didn't work.)

I made a one-off Firefox build that modified the Firefox migrator to include prefs.js and search.json.mozlz4. I'll attach a patch. The relevant code is here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/ba4fab1cc2f1c9c4e07cdb71542b8d441707c577/browser/components/migration/FirefoxProfileMigrator.jsm#182

The self-extracting exe isn't the smoothest UX for users: When you first run it, Windows shows you warnings because it's not signed or whatever. Then you wait a moment while it's extracted. Then you get Firefox's migrator wizard that asks which browser you want to migrate from, so you have to choose Firefox. Then the wizard asks which profile you want to migrate from. Maybe that's not shown if you only have one profile; I had several. Then Firefox starts. So there's room for improving user-testing builds, if we want to spend time on it.

Comment 1

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

This work is done for now.

Comment 2

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Addendum to above:

In addition to pushing to tryserver to generate a build as the readme suggests, you can also use a local build. You need to run mach package after you run mach build, and then your zip file -- which corresponds to target.zip on tryserver -- is located at objdir/dist/firefox-84.0a1.en-US.win64.zip. Of course the exact file name depends on the Firefox version. Also, objdir/dist/firefox is the unzipped contents of that file.

You're likely building on 64-bit Windows, so be careful if you need a 32-bit build, as the readme cautions. You'll need to use tryserver in that case. I did a quick google for 32-bit vs. 64-bit market share, and according to the first hit, 32-bit Windows 10 has only a 0.43% share in their survey, but ymmv.