790158 - APIs to get OS version, firmware version, and hardware version for device information

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Kai-Chih Hu [:khu]]

In http://people.mozilla.com/~lco/Settings_B2G/Release_1_Specs/R1_Device_v2.pdf, page 6, we will need to get information about OS version, firmware version, and hardware version. First 2 items may be related to software update that Marshall is working on. This case is used to monitor the status to get all these information.

Comment 1

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Weren't we solving this using a settings hack right now? This seems like an ok v1 solution.

Comment 2

[Chris Jones [:cjones] inactive; ni?/f?/r? if you need me]

I would go even further and suggest we just drop a file somewhere it can be XHR's or <script src=>'d.

Comment 3

[Chris Jones [:cjones] inactive; ni?/f?/r? if you need me]

... if we even need it outside of core gecko, which isn't clear yet.

Comment 4

[Shelly Lin [:shelly]]

Hi All,
First of all, after discussing with our Gaia team, we came to the conclusion of doing it with settings db, base on the point of an easier implementation. Any suggestion on that? Second, where or how should these info come from exactly?

Comment 5

[Shelly Lin [:shelly]]

To be more precised, it's a hack to IndexedDB of mozSettings, please reference bug 783021, however, maybe creating a dom property for it might be the long term solution?

Comment 6

[Marco Chen [:mchen]]

Hi, how about to follow the design from Android.
Keep these info on Android Property.
Ex: ro.build, ro.bootloader...

Comment 7

[Shian-Yow Wu [:swu]]

Sounds a good idea to use Android property.

Comment 8

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

We don't have the android property api exposed to Apps though. But settings is exposed. Another option is to generate a .js file at build time that we can include in any certified app that wants to know the build data.

Comment 9

[Shelly Lin [:shelly]]

Attachment: Add os version and hardware info to the mozSettings.

Comment 10

[Chris Jones [:cjones] inactive; ni?/f?/r? if you need me]

Comment on attachment 661717 [details] [diff] [review]
Add os version and hardware info to the mozSettings.

This looks like an OK hack to me, but originally I believe we tried to avoid having read-only information values in settings.

f? to gwagner/sicking to see if they have better ideas.  If not, I'm ok with this.

Comment 11

[Gregor Wagner [:gwagner]]

Is this only used by the Settings App?
I just want to make sure that we don't have grant multiple apps the settings permission because of this.

Comment 12

[Jonas Sicking (:sicking) No longer reading bugmail consistently]

Comment on attachment 661717 [details] [diff] [review]
Add os version and hardware info to the mozSettings.

Review of attachment 661717 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I agree, this is a hack that abuse the settings API. But I think it's an ok solution that we can live for now.

The only other alternative that I see is to generate a .js file at build time which provide version information and which can be included in any gaia app and <script> sourced wherever we need version info. I don't really have an opinion about which solution to use since I don't see any dramatic downsides with either approach.

Comment 13

[Shelly Lin [:shelly]]

Attachment: Version 2: Set the os version in confvars.sh

Thanks for all your feedbacks. I made a slightly twist so that instead of hard-coding the os version in settings.js, it is being set in confvars.sh, which itself also keeps other app information. This is just to avoid modifying settings.js if we want to bump the version number.

Generating a .js file at built time sounds like a good way to go, but I think we still need to parse out the hardware info at run time, and do the work in settings.js.

Comment 14

[Chris Jones [:cjones] inactive; ni?/f?/r? if you need me]

Comment on attachment 662483 [details] [diff] [review]
Version 2: Set the os version in confvars.sh

Looks good!

We'll have some fun negotiations over b2g versioning, but that shouldn't block this at all.

Comment 15

[Shelly Lin [:shelly]]

Attachment: Added reviewer.

Thanks a lot!
This patch only updates the reviewer in comment and description.

Comment 16

[Kan-Ru Chen [:kanru] (UTC+9)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/f1ad620dab86

Comment 17

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f1ad620dab86