QA/Telemetry/Developing a Telemetry Experiment

Telemetry Experiments

Getting started

• clone the repo http://hg.mozilla.org/webtools/telemetry-experiment-server/
• create a new folder under experiments/ for your new experiment
  • it is highly recommended that you use `hg cp` from an existing folder (this makes review easier as it's able to track the changes made to the boilerplate files)
  • e.g.
    • cd experiments; hg cp e10s-beta45-withoutaddons my-new-experiment
  • use a descriptive folder name to highlight the feature, channel and version
• the main experiment code lives in code/bootstrap.js

Manifest file

• the file under experiments/your-experiment/manifest.json contains the configuration details for your experiment
• the "sample" value, for example, tells the percentage of users (matching the other criteria) that will receive your experiment

install.rdf file

• the file under experiments/your-experiment/code/install.rdf file contains details about the experiment add-on. The <type> value for all experiments should be 128. Note that an add-on with type=128 does not work by drag'n'dropping it to Firefox like a regular add-on (it needs to be loaded by the experiment system)

Building the experiment

• To build the experiment, you just need to create an .xpi file with your bootstrap.js and install.rdf files. Put this xpi in the root of your experiment folder (i.e., experiments/your-experiment/)
• If you grab one example Makefile from the tree, you just need to use `make experiment` and the xpi will be created for you
  • note that the xpi is created under a build/ folder. You need to move it the proper location (the root of your experiment)

Building the server

• To test, you need to build the telemetry server (which is a simple static folder). To build it, you do in the root of the repo:
  • python build.py ../build http://localhost:8080
• you can change ../build to any folder where you want to output it, **but note:**: this folder will be erased by the build.py script