1903592 - Design: How do we support metrics like profile group id who want to get in on `include_client_id: true`?

Status: NEW

(Data Platform and Tools :: Glean: SDK, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Chris H-C :chutten]

The Firefox Desktop profile group id needs to behave differently than bog-standard uuid or string metrics. It needs to be included in pings with include_client_id: true, excluded in pings with include_client_id: false, and probably excluded from calculations of "is this ping empty" for send_if_empty: false.

This makes it a little like client_info.client_id (inclusion/exclusion), a little like glean.client.annotation.experimentation_id (externally controlled, but excluded from emptiness calculation), and a little like legacy.telemetry.client_id (present at around the same time and absent in the same ways. Plus, if we sort this for profile group id, we might want to migrate legacy.telemetry.client_id to this mechanism too).

This needs thoughtful design and implementation.

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I wonder if we can add a new property to metrics.yaml, is_client_identifier (that's a terrible name!) or something to identify metrics that should be included when include_client_id is true?

Comment 2

[Chris H-C :chutten]

Another terrible name that gets across the "include it in most places, but don't consider it for emptiness calculation": is_environment

Gosh, I shuddered just writing it.