Re: The future of Linux32 builds and tests

On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 12:42:11PM -0700, Daniel Holbert wrote:
> On 10/08/2015 11:34 AM, Daniel Holbert wrote:
> > On 10/08/2015 10:01 AM, [email protected] wrote: We should try to
> > get data from some 3rd party (not our download tallies) about the
> > Firefox-on-Linux 32-bit vs. 64-bit user stats, before we make a call
> > about demoting Linux32 to Tier 2. (Maybe we already have such data?)
> 
> Ah -- looking at the bugs that kmoir linked to, it looks like we do
> have some data on this, from telemetry (which is opt-in in release
> builds, so it's not perfect but it's something):
> 
>  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1204920#c1
> 
> The numbers there show that ~40% of our Linux users are using the
> 32-bit version. (on release & beta channels)  That's more than I was
> expecting.
> 
> Given that, I'd be uncomfortable with option (3) ("turn off Linux32
> builds + tests entirely").  I'd also be uncomfortable with option (2)
> (doing builds but no tests), because then 40% of our linux users would
> be getting un-tested bits.  (Likely-working since they work on other
> platforms, but who knows.)
> 
> Option (1) (running tests occasionally) seems doable though, and
> depending on how infrequent "occasionally" is, it seems like it could
> get us cost-savings that are close to those from option (2).

Now the interesting question, is how many of those users are running on
64-bits systems, and are only using 32-bits builds because that's what
they downloaded back when mozilla.org didn't even offer the 64-bits
version, which brings to the additional question: would it be worth
forcing 32->64-bit upgrades of Firefox.

Mike