e10s Weekly Update: Feb 8

Executive Summary

• The Plan of record is to enable e10s as of Firefox 46 (GA April 19). This initial GA release will be a cohort release targeting 100% of users without Add-Ons, users without a11y features enabled, and, the non-RTL language versions of Firefox.

• The team is currently focused on burning down Milestone 8 issues. M8 tickets block riding the trains for the above populations as of 46 Beta (March 8). M8 is largely focused on correctness, responsiveness, and stability. Velocity is high, fixed vs. incoming rate is about at stasis. At this point, we are looking forward to incoming Telemetry data from the Firefox 45 Beta experiment to help us evaluate readiness for 46; we should have stability and responsiveness data around Feb 18th (possibly sooner).

Why yellow? e10s is designated 'yellow' or 'at risk' because:

The team continues to work at a high velocity with 14 M8 issues open; the Telemetry A/B testing for Beta 44 didn't yield the level reliable, actionable data we were anticipating (See: http://pastebin.com/SUT7WPkq). We have since addressed the known issues and are more confident in the Beta 45 Telemetry A/B test; the project will remain yellow until we have incoming measurements and subsequent evaluation (and will likely stay yellow until we are in Firefox 46 Beta and approach our final go/no-go).

Highlights and Accomplishments

We recently landed and uplifted high value fixes to Firefox 45 in preparation for the A/B testing, this includes stability fixes and notably enabling the pref to outlaw unsafe CPOWs, See:http://pastebin.com/Qzh1cLxu.

Fixes to the BHR measurement to ensure we get good responsiveness measurements during Beta 45 A/B testing were also landed/uplifted.

Next Steps

As our risk of unknown unknowns begin to decrease for 46, some of us need to start to drill down into 47 as we'd like to include users with compatible Add-Ons. In order to prepare for this, we are using BHR Telemetry data to generate a whitelist/blacklist/graylist of Add-Ons based on how often they jank e10s Firefox. As Engineering continues to converge on M8, and the 45 A/B testing deployed, Product and Program will shift focus to tightening up the final plan of record for Add-Ons in an e10s world.

Program will also be engaging with more cross-functional teams as we get closer to Beta 46 (mid-Feb).

Validation for Stability and Performance

• Beta 45 A/B Telemetry Experiment was deployed on time on Jan 28. Phase 1 includes users with add-ons to detect which ones are causing jank. Phase 2 which will kick off around Feb 11th. The following fixes were landed and uplifted to improve the data collected during this round (there may be more):
  • BHR Responsiveness accuracy: bug 1228437
  • Over counting crash reports for the content process bug 1227312
• Also see:
  • Telemetry E10S Measurement Meta bug 1222849
  • Performance Tracker Meta bug 1198187
  • Plan for measuring e10s performance + stability, here.

• Upcoming Milestones:
  • Feb 11: Phase 2 starts
  • Feb 25: Testing concludes for 45

Look here for more milestones tracking actions around incoming data/any adjustments we need to make

Add-Ons + WebExtensions

• Devs are looking for open bugs in webextensions API
• Working to converge SDK issues: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v0tsxR2OS0eKY2mzDvadrkl-WTjNN-wr9qKU8rpJLa4/edit
• (Carry Over)We have a meeting next week with Product to review Use cases then UX/dev priorities/realities for roll-out selection capabilities for e10s with regards to add-ons (allow/deny lists).
• (Carry Over)We need to make progress on creating a white/black/grey list for incompatible add-ons bug 1233455. The first phase of the Telemetry A/B experiment launching on the 27th will be focused on curating data to help create this black list.
• Source of truth for add-ons for priority and status on compatibility can be found, here.

Automated tests

Highlights and Accomplishments

• bug 1186966 - Let e10s tests ride the trains
• Browser Chrome + and Mochi Test Plan (blocks). Need to get to 90%.
• Need to make sure that M-C and M-A are in lock step
• Goal to get all tests signed-off in M/C by Feb 29th

Next Steps

• Here is a good test-by-test reference:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10UeyRoiWV2HjkWwAU51HXyXAV7YLi4BjDm55mr5Xv6c/edit#gid=1777180571

A11y

• Wiki to track work is, here.
• Currently focusing on test remoting of a11y calls from main process.
• Good progress is being made on a11y work in general; I will be tracking more closely once we're done with M8.

Release Schedule

Current Plan of Record is to Target 100% of the population who do not have add-ons installed or a11y features enabled for Firefox 46.

Milestones

Check back here to see interim milestones as they are created