Firefox Core Engineering/App Updater roadmap

The Firefox Core Engineering (FCE) team ran from March 2016 through January 2018. All work on that team has been dispersed to other teams.

This page should be considered legacy.

For more information on previously-FCE activities, go by individuals listed in Historical knowledge areas. (If you're in a pinch, ask ddurst.)

Application Update should be fast, reliable, and secure. It should also be unobtrusive and largely invisible to the user.

Strategy

• We need a regular cadence of measurement, analysis, and resultant code changes.
• Improve speed and reliability for known issues; continue investigations into unknown areas, because they yield positive changes.

Tactics

• Telemetry analysis and security analysis.
• Address testing gaps at the system level.
• Increase telemetry visibility for non-extreme use.

Milestones

• "Update Agent" project was created from telemetry analysis. Phase 1 (download) should be completed by end of 2017 Q3 (target: FF58).
  • PRD
  • Tracking bug
• From telemetry measurement and analysis additional cases should be handled similar to how the NS_ERROR_DOCUMENT_NOT_CACHED case is handled. Not scheduled and other work is currently a higher priority. (target: TBD)
• Create non-orphan dashboard for telemetry from "current" versions, analogous to the update orphaning dashboard on t.m.o. (target: Q3 2017)
• Use LZMA for MAR file compression. This is based partially on telemetry measurement and analysis and specifically the time it takes to download. Should be completed by 2017 Q3 (target: FF56). completed: 641212
• Use SHA384 certificates for MAR file signing. This is based on security analysis. Should be completed by 2017 Q3 (target: FF56). completed: 1324498