Partner attribution

In contrast to Partner repacks, attributed builds only differ from the normal Firefox builds by the adding a string in the dummy windows signing certificate. We support doing this for:

  • Windows stub installers,

  • Windows full installers,

  • macOS DMGs.

The parameters of the string are carried into the telemetry system, tagging an install into a cohort of users. This a lighter weight process because we don’t repackage or re-sign the builds.

Parameters & Scheduling

Partner attribution uses a number of parameters to control how they work:

  • release_enable_partner_attribution

  • release_partner_config

  • release_partner_build_number

  • release_partners

The enable parameter is a boolean, a simple on/off switch. We set it in shipit’s is_partner_enabled() when starting a release. It’s true for Firefox betas >= b5 and releases, but otherwise false, the same as partner repacks.

release_partner_config is a dictionary of configuration data which drives the task generation logic. It’s usually looked up during the release promotion action task, using the Github GraphQL API in the get_partner_config_by_url() function, with the url defined in taskcluster/config.yml.

release_partner_build_number is an integer used to create unique upload paths in the firefox candidates directory, while release_partners is a list of partners that should be attributed (i.e. a subset of the whole config). Both are intended for use when respinning a partner after the regular Firefox has shipped. More information on that can be found in the RelEng Docs.

release_partners is shared with partner repacks but we don’t support doing both at the same time.

Configuration

This is done using an attribution_config.yml file which next lives to the default.xml used for partner repacks. There are no repos for each partner, the whole configuration exists in the one file because the amount of information to be tracked is much smaller.

An example config looks like this:

defaults:
  medium: distribution
  source: mozilla
configs:
- campaign: sample
  content: sample-001
  locales:
    - en-US
    - de
    - ru
  platforms:
    - macosx64-shippable
    - win32-shippable
  upload_to_candidates: true
  publish_to_releases: true

The four main parameters are medium, source, campaign, content, of which the first two are common to all attributions. The combination of campaign and content should be unique to avoid confusion in telemetry data. They correspond to the repo name and sub-directory in partner repacks, so avoid any overlap between values in partner repacks and atrribution. The optional parameters of variation, and experiment may also be specified.

Non-empty lists of locales and platforms are required parameters (NB the -shippable suffix should be used on the platforms).

The Firefox installers are uploaded into the candidates directory when upload_to_candidates is set to true and into the release directory when publish_to_releases is too.

Verifying attribution

To verify that a Firefox install was correctly attributed, navigate to about:telemetry#search=attribution in the browser. The following fields should be populated with values matching the attribution_config.yml:

  • attribution.medium

  • attribution.source

  • attribution.campaign

  • attribution.content

Repacking process

Attribution only works with these type of tasks:

  • attribution - add attribution code to the regular builds

  • beetmover - move the files to a partner-specific destination

  • bouncer - create partner-attributed links that point to the latest version.

Attribution

  • kind: release-partner-attribution

There is one task per OS.

On Windows, python/mozrelease/mozrelease/attribute_builds.py handles the attribution. Since bug 1943640, only the stub installer is attributed: it carries the attribution code and passes it to the installed Firefox. No attributed full installer is generated. The stub installer is a 32-bit binary and is therefore shipped under the win32 folder. The ATTRIBUTION_CONFIG environment variable controls the script. The size of ATTRIBUTION_CONFIG variable may grow large if the number of configurations increases, and it may be necessary to pass the content of attribution_config.yml to the script instead, or via an artifact of the promotion task.

On macOS, the dmg attribute binary handles the attribution. Unlike Windows, ATTRIBUTION_CONFIG is not used. Instead, the payload is passed as a CLI argument.

Beetmover

  • kinds: release-partner-attribution-beetmover, release-beetmover-push-to-release

The first kind moves and renames the artifacts to their public location in the candidates directory.

Each task will have the project:releng:beetmover:action:push-to-partner and project:releng:beetmover:bucket:release scopes. There’s a partner-specific code path in beetmoverscript.

The second kind moves it under the release directory. In the case of partner builds, this is pub/firefox/releases/partners/.

Bouncer

  • kinds: release-partner-repack-bouncer-sub and release-bouncer-aliases.

release-partner-repack-bouncer-sub creates the bouncer entries for both partner repacks and partner attributed builds. release-bouncer-aliases creates/updates the aliases of all type of builds (standard Firefox, partner repacks, partner attributed builds) to point to their latest bouncer entry.