1741981 - Add a "Report Firefox perf problem" UI flow / preset which captures about:memory and about:support and embeds it in the profile

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: Performance Tools (Profiler/Timeline), enhancement, P3)

Description

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

This is a proposal from the "Re-thinking the Performance Triage" group in the Performance Team.

We are trying to minimize the back-and-forth communication between users who report Firefox performance bugs and developers who triage these bugs. A large percentage of the reported bugs are problems with memory consumption; for these we usually have to ask for an about:memory dump. And some of the reports are easier to understand with additional information from about:support. (Examples of this additional information: machine details like gpu model / drivers or screen resolution; modified preferences like force disabled acceleration, layout frame rate, or resist fingerprinting; which experiment features are enabled; webrender configuration details; accessibility stuff).

It would be great if we could streamline the process of reporting a performance problem, by collecting all this information at the same time. One way to bundle all this information up would be to embed it in a profile, when a profile is captured.
We don't want to capture this information in all profiles, only in profiles that are used for reporting Firefox performance bugs.

Specifically, our proposal is:

1. In the profiler button panel, have a separate preset, or a separate "entry point" of some form, for "Firefox performance report".
2. When this option is picked, capture the following information before the profiler is started:
   • An anonymized about:memory dump, as JSON.
   • The contents of about:support, as JSON.
3. Embed these JSON blobs in the profile JSON.
4. In the Firefox profiler, provide extra checkboxes in the upload dialog so that the user is aware that this information is included.
5. In the Firefox profiler, provide ways to download the about:support and about:memory JSON as files.