855148 - Add-on hotfixes should only go to official builds by default

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

If I understand correctly, since the extensions.hotfix.* prefs are set in firefox.js without checking whether MOZ_OFFICIAL is defined, Firefox Hotfixes (ID: [e-mail]) get shipped to unofficial browser builds.

I'm not sure if this is wanted in some cases or not.  If not, we should probably move the default pref values to firefox-branding.js.

Comment 1

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Being able to hotfix nightly/aurora users seems potentially useful (e.g. what if we broke aurora updates somehow?), so I don't think we want to outright disable it. That does mean we need to be careful when writing the hotfixes to consider their impact on these builds...

Comment 2

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

(In reply to :Gavin Sharp (use [e-mail] for email) from comment #1)
> That does mean we need to be careful when writing the
> hotfixes to consider their impact on these builds...

Yeah - this is our method of mitigation right now, being really thoughtful about targeted versions. Is there a specific driver for doing something about this?

Comment 3

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

I see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=812573#c18 now. Doesn't feel like this is a blocker for that bug specifically though.

Comment 4

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

(In reply to :Gavin Sharp (use [e-mail] for email) from comment #1)
> Being able to hotfix nightly/aurora users seems potentially useful (e.g.
> what if we broke aurora updates somehow?), so I don't think we want to
> outright disable it. That does mean we need to be careful when writing the
> hotfixes to consider their impact on these builds...

I was referring to MOZILLA_OFFICIAL=1 (aka. OFFICIAL_BUILD=1) builds, not MOZ_OFFICIAL_BRANDING so Nightly and Aurora are included. We currently disable various services such as safebrowsing, breakpad (crash reporter), know your rights, Telemetry, etc. for unofficial builds. They generally also get the less frequent app update check by being on the "default" channel.

Hotfixes seem to be a similar situation to breakpad and telemetry in that we don't support these unofficial builds and so we don't gather data on them. I would argue that we also don't want to be making changes to these builds via hotfixes because we don't support them and don't know how our hotfixes will interact with them.

I don't think this is a big deal but since the fix is fairly small and there is potential for problems, it's worth considering.  I can also see times where it would be useful to send hotfixes to unofficial builds such as a security fix.

(In reply to Alex Keybl [:akeybl] from comment #3)
> I don't think think is blocking either but it was somewhat surprising to me compared to how other services are handled.

Comment 5

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

Ah, I see. So things like developer self-builds. I guess I don't feel strongly - unlikely to impact a lot of users, and unlikely to harm them negatively even if it does impact someone (since we're careful with what we do in hotfixes).

Comment 6

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Mike, this seems like something you would know more about.  Any thoughts?

Comment 7

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

On one hand, I've seen hotfixes as a useful feature to have for unofficial builds (as in iceweasel), although it's not entirely clear to me what is being sent over with hotfixes (btw is there a list of them? some place to follow to be aware of their release?). On the other hand, iceweasel (and related stuff, like icecat, maybe, or the firefox "fork" with dubious compiler optimizations turned on, whatever it's called) is likely the only case where it might be useful as a feature for unofficial builds.

Comment 8

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Thanks. Do these other builds generally use the same em:id as Firefox? It seems like Iceweasel does.

(In reply to Mike Hommey [:glandium] from comment #7)
> (btw is there a list of them? some place to follow to be aware of their release?).

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/firefox-hotfixes/file/tip/README
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/firefox-hotfixes/atom-log/

They don't have their own BMO component ATM.

Comment 9

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

(In reply to Matthew N. [:MattN] from comment #8)
> Thanks. Do these other builds generally use the same em:id as Firefox? It
> seems like Iceweasel does.

I think icecat does. I'm not sure about the others, but it would make sense that they would, as it allows to use all the addons.