1664306 - Allow FOG metrics to expire on app version, not build date

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Telemetry, task, P1)

Description

[Chris H-C :chutten]

Due to pesky things like ESR, expiring on build dates doesn't make as much sense for metrics in Firefox Desktop as it does for metrics in our other projects.

Also, the concept of "expiry" being tied to versions allows for things like the Beta Simulation builds to correctly catch bad tests caused by expired metrics.

I propose we support in FOG the following three expiry values:

• "expired" for manually expiring metrics
• "never" for never-expiring metrics
• X which is a number like 88 to denote the first version in which this metric is considered expired
  • e.g. the metric will only be reported on versions < X

To support this we'll need to:

• Loosen the glean_parser metrics schema so it accepts numbers like "88"
  • Ideally this will be a number, not a string containing a number, but I'm not fussy
• Augment glean_parser to accept an expires validation function as an option
• Add docs and tests to glean_parser
• Cut a glean_parser release
• Vendor the new release in mozilla-central
• Write the validation function in run_glean_parser and add some FOG tests

This'll be fun!

Comment 1

[Michael Droettboom [:mdroettboom]]

Sounds like a good plan in general.

Only one suggestion: maybe add some way to make it clear that it's a build number. I can imagine expiring on other numeric things in the future and this could cause some confusion (see how we used to support numbers for bugs and ultimately required URLs). e.g.: Use the string build:88 instead of the number 88.

Comment 2

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/glean_parser/pull/227

Comment 3

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/glean/pull/1213

Comment 4

[Chris H-C :chutten]

Attachment: Bug 1664306 - Bump vendored glean_parser version to 1.28.5 r?janerik!

Comment 5

[Chris H-C :chutten]

Attachment: Bug 1664306 - FOG metrics should expire on version, not date. r?janerik!

There are three acceptable expires values for FOG metrics:
expired - Used to manually mark a metric as expired.
never - Used to mark permanent data collections.
X - A number representing the first major Firefox version where this metric
will be expired.

Depends on D90392

Comment 6

[Chris H-C :chutten]

(In reply to Michael Droettboom [:mdroettboom] from comment #1)

Sounds like a good plan in general.

Only one suggestion: maybe add some way to make it clear that it's a build number. I can imagine expiring on other numeric things in the future and this could cause some confusion (see how we used to support numbers for bugs and ultimately required URLs). e.g.: Use the string build:88 instead of the number 88.

I've gone with it being a string instead of a number, but otherwise left it indistinguishable from any other string of digits because of the previous examples of Firefox Telemetry and because I couldn't think of a concise way to signify the "type" of what we're after (it's not just the version, it's the major portion of the app version.)

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/5596a03b5334
Bump vendored glean_parser version to 1.28.5 r=janerik
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/acfaf1382fa0
FOG metrics should expire on version, not date. r=janerik

Comment 8

[Atila Butkovits]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/5596a03b5334
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/acfaf1382fa0