1942134 - Stop building Android x86

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android :: General, task, P3)

Description

[Paul Adenot (:padenot)]

Recently I did a push that was build-only for a contributor to test a patch, and to my surprise I got a build for Android x86 (the 32-bits ISA). We should consider not doing that, certainly not by default.

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/jobs?repo=try&revision=3e78a13ed712a82138e1ff34afe2e3572af403e7

Comment 1

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

I don't think our team cares one way or the other here, we'll follow whatever the android team needs.

Redirecting to others who may have thoughts/opinions.

Comment 2

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

(In reply to Julien Cristau [:jcristau] from comment #1)

I don't think our team cares one way or the other here, we'll follow whatever the android team needs.

Redirecting to others who may have thoughts/opinions.

No opinion. If we're not running it in automation, and the numbers are as low in the wild as I think they are, we should drop it.

Comment 3

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

That would be a question to ask the mobile team. Not sure who could make that call, but I assume @bclark can redirect to the right person if that's not himself.

Comment 4

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

Having ARM to be the default would make sense, I think it's more common arch

Comment 5

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

Polly, do you have an opinion on this?

Comment 6

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

This isn't about the default, it's about what we're building in CI and what we're shipping.

Comment 7

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

(and the default is already not x86, and I don't think it ever was)

Comment 8

[Polly [:polly]]

So if x86 isn't the default in CI - which i agree sounds sensible as arm is much more common!
Is the question here, should we stop shipping to & supporting devices with x86 ABI at all?
I feel like that is a bigger question that would require more investigation and input to decide - we would need to understand what would be gained by dropping support, and the full consequences of doing so.
I know x86 is pretty long in the tooth now but there are potentially some devices that would lose firefox as a result (eg. older chromebooks)

Comment 9

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

I think this is related to the fact that we build this old Android, when we transition our emulators to something newer, we can get rid of Intel builds while we're at it

Comment 10

[[:owlish] 🦉 PST]

(leaving this untriaged so that we don't loose this)

Comment 11

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

(In reply to [:owlish] 🦉 PST from comment #9)

I think this is related to the fact that we build this old Android, when we transition our emulators to something newer, we can get rid of Intel builds while we're at it

To be clear, this is only about 32-bit x86 builds. We should still keep x86-64 around if for no other reason than it's what the vast majority of GeckoView CI runs on. I've heard that we're looking at bumping our minimum API level so maybe we could make this change as part of that effort. I would assume that x86 devices running Android would be on extremely old versions anyway.

Comment 12

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Just did a quick dump of Intel x86 devices from the Play Console. Looks like indeed a lot will drop off once we move to a higher minimum API level. And as expected, raw usage is pretty low overall.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/163tSNrAq5PNk0MP0dpq-B_3PXx-WFcQduX_qz9AJQwo/edit?usp=sharing

Comment 13

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

re https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1949225

On the UI test instrumentation side Firebase Test Lab is deprecating and removing the last few x86 virtual emulators they have on 2025-03-31. We run a small start-up test on the published x86 APK on CI.

Comment 14

[Amedyne Moya [:amoya]]

I agree with dropping support (building and testing) on x86. Install base is really low: 0.28% in production.

Comment 15

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

(In reply to Aaron Train [:aaronmt] from comment #13)

re https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1949225

On the UI test instrumentation side Firebase Test Lab is deprecating and removing the last few x86 virtual emulators they have on 2025-03-31. We run a small start-up test on the published x86 APK on CI.

Bug 1949225 has landed. Deprecation of the x86 Pixel2 is in effect on Test Lab on 2025-03-31.

Comment 16

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

FYI, this received leadership approval to move forward.

Comment 17

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Bug 1987789 gets things started, but we can use this bug to track the remaining work for fully decommissioning and removing all remaining vestiges of Android x86 from our build system and CI.

Comment 18

[Amedyne Moya [:amoya]]

Ryan,
Do we still have remaining work tied to this ticket?

Comment 19

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

No, Joel did the rest in bug 1989644.