Build Metrics
Build Metrics is a catch-all term for performance measures that are generated by the Firefox build system and tracked by Perfherder.
num_constructors
Number of static constructors found by the compiler in the Firefox C++ codebase. Lower is better. Static constructors are undesirable because their initialization imposes an unavoidable time penalty every time Firefox is started.
installer size
Size in bytes of the Firefox installer. Lower is better here, especially on space-restricted platforms like Android.
build times
Amount of time it takes to build Firefox in automation on a specific platform / configuration. Lower is better.
compiler warnings
Number of compiler warnings detected during a build. Lower is better.
Due to the way the build system works, compiler warnings are not consistently detected. So the value may fluctuate from build to build even if the number of compiler warnings didn’t actually change. Since Perfherder alerts are calculated based on the mean value of a range, a regression may be reported as a fractional value.
In case of alert
Folks to contact when a change in metric can’t be associated with a bug:
Mike Hommey (
:glandium)Anything that says sccache
Build time
Serge Guelton (
:sergesanspaille)Build time teardown
Installer size
Compiler metrics
XUL section size, NSS section size
Paul Adenot (
:padenot)avcodec, avutil section size
Julien Cristau (
:jcristau)fetch_contentanything
otherwise, open a bug as usual and NI the person that seem to have regressed the metric, etc.