# Engineering Effectiveness Newsletter (September & October 2023 Edition)

**URL:** <https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/engineering-effectiveness-newsletter-september-october-2023-edition/124099>\
**Category:** Firefox Tooling Announcements\
**Created:** [November 8, 2023, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/engineering-effectiveness-newsletter-september-october-2023-edition/124099 "2023-11-08T14:07:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![marco1](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/user_avatar/discourse.mozilla.org/marco1/32/26555_2.png) [@marco1](https://discourse.mozilla.org/u/marco1)\
**Post date:** [November 8, 2023, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/engineering-effectiveness-newsletter-september-october-2023-edition/124099/1 "2023-11-08T14:07:00Z")

</div>

Welcome to the September & October edition of the Engineering Effectiveness Newsletter! The Engineering Effectiveness org makes it easy to develop, test and release Mozilla software at scale. See below for some highlights, then read on for more detailed info!

## Highlights ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/1/7/17394fae1cdb1f675096c37a0a727f69f7d67148.png)

- We have a [new tool](https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/0LRP6F9Ri_A) to confirm failures are real failures, and [documentation](https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/0LRP6F9Ri_A) for how to understand try results. Please use it and provide feedback!
- [Build](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1850647) and [test](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1860896) tasks now produce an artifact in a format that the Firefox Profiler can read, making it easy to see where time was spent, and how the CPU and memory resources were used during the task. Click the “Open in Firefox Profiler” button that appears in Treeherder when selecting a task to see what you waited for!
- We now [automatically file bugs for new actionable crashes](https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/jRP0-rVnN3g)
  - Let Suhaib know should you have suggestions!

- Ability to add images in PDFs has been released in Firefox 119
  - [Adding alt text](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1844952) is also supported (and recommended)
  - The resizing of images is keyboard accessible, one of the few document editors to support it

- A new translation model has been trained with the new pipeline on Taskcluster (English → Hungarian)
  - This opens the door to extending the language coverage more quickly

- It is now possible to use a --push-to-lando flag to mach try to push patches to Lando for queueing on try, reducing the wait time to seconds
- A post about the [Firefox Nightly .deb Package](https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozillas-firefox-nightly-deb-packages-for-debian-based-linux-distributions/) appeared on the Nightly blog. In 4 days, we have [converted 8% of our DAU](https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/dashboard/mozilla-s-deb-package-uptake-dau-bug-1799516-?p_normalized_channels=%5B%22nightly%22%5D) on the Linux Nightly channel
- Following significant effort across multiple Engineering Effectiveness teams the proposal to migrate from Mercurial to Git was approved and announced

## Contributors ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/9/2/922294035bebcc6015cafc8f347a15dbcf67c278.png)

- Logan Rosen
- Jonas Jenwald
- Mathew Hodson
- Michelle Mounde
- Varun Shekhar
- Thierry CH.
- Amu Christian Nnamdi
- Melaku Alehegn
- Nazarene Wanyaga
- Priyanshi Gaur
- Nagendra Bhat
- John Pangas
- Promise Fru
- Jacob Michalskie

## Detailed Project Updates

### Bugzilla ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/4/6/46a319ede3194c5a294f0ef1c45209f296f4cd7f.png) and Bugbug ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/8/4/84fccb51f4aa60c5426146f77cfd5fd930d07aab.png)

- Tom Ritter added an option to BugBot reminders to [notify about patches that should land at a later time](https://github.com/mozilla/bugbot/pull/2231)
- Suhaib Mujahid improved BugBot to [avoid copying metadata from private duplicate bugs to public bugs](https://github.com/mozilla/bugbot/pull/2223)
- glob landed a [new high-resolution icon](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1241904) for BMO, designed by Jacob Michalskie

### CI and Treeherder ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/9/d/9d317110c196afee8bb47a99e30d10b6b4e5361b.png)

- Marco landed some improvements for mozci’s automatic intermittent detection algorithm ([Don't consider groups as intermittent only if they are both inconsistently failing across configs and in retriggers within the same config by marco-c · Pull Request #1044 · mozilla/mozci · GitHub](https://github.com/mozilla/mozci/pull/1044) and [Consider groups classified as "NEW" to be potentially regressions and groups not classified as "NEW" to be potentially intermittents by marco-c · Pull Request #1045 · mozilla/mozci · GitHub](https://github.com/mozilla/mozci/pull/1045))
- Joel [implemented a new tool](https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/0LRP6F9Ri_A) to confirm failures are real failures, and wrote [documentation](https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/0LRP6F9Ri_A) for how to understand try results
- [Build](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1850647) and [test](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1860896) tasks now produce an artifact in a format that the Firefox Profiler can read, making it easy to see where time was spent, and how the CPU and memory resources were used during the task
- Test manifest [migration to TOML](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1821199) is moving along, thanks to Tom
- Ahal got many more test suites running with Wayland, including mochitest-plain and crashtests

### Crash Management ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/2/7/27d099ae1ce543b6522316d1f7b9ac86fc7df8f5.png)

- Suhaib Mujahid deployed a feature for BugBot to [automatically file bugs for new actionable crashes](https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.org/g/dev-platform/c/jRP0-rVnN3g)
- The symbol server now supports [fetching symbols using the code identifier](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1746940) when the debug identifier is missing, this allowed us to symbolicate almost 10% of Windows crashes that were previously missing symbols
- Android crashes would not be symbolicated properly when the libxul.so memory mapping contained holes, this is now [fixed](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1837471)
- When looking for debug information for external builds and dependencies our infrastructure now uses [debuginfod](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1753576) to find missing information
- An issue with elfhack prevented crash annotations from being fetched correctly on Android and Ubuntu Snap builds, this is [now fixed](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1855135)

### Lint, Static Analysis and Code Coverage ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/8/f/8f0fae3bd29285c8915ebf151dbb7da2e0c1ba68.png)

- Black has been upgraded to version 23.3.0 by Logan Rosen

### OS Integration and Security ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/5/2/52e9cfd12ea4c265368889bc75c155998bd9603a.png)

- Heitor Neiva and Haik Aftandilian landed taskgraph and codesigning changes allowing Firefox 119 to ship hardened entitlements for Firefox on macOS. This results in a reduced set of entitlements/privileges for almost all Firefox executables including content and GMP processes. We had to relax one parent-process restriction to continue to support pkcs#11 modules and aim to address that with follow-up bug [1860950](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1860950)

### PDF.js ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/b/4/b417f8214c93ecb8263adfcf6da99e5cf2e6241d.png)

- As part of the “add image to PDF” feature, Calixte made it possible to [add alt text to images](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1844952)
- We shipped the “add image to PDF” feature in Firefox 119!
- Calixte migrated pdf.js to use Fluent

### Firefox Translations ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/e/9/e906f84e2183bdccb4c8ede70974f8558ac397d0.png)

- Sean Feng made it possible to [translate shadow DOM elements](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1841656).
- Kagami fixed [a nasty bug](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1840705) that prevented Twitter dynamic content to be translated (among many other cases)
- A new translation model has been trained with the new pipeline on Taskcluster (English → Hungarian)
  - This opens the door to extending the language coverage more quickly

### Phabricator ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/1/e/1e4b90d710661f22d2f9a669d5ed65e1fef1c6a1.png), moz-phab, and Lando ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/c/e/ce127e23a35dc1515219708c8ff9cc95c4bca0af.png)

- Connor Sheehan added a --push-to-lando flag to mach try to push patches to Lando for queueing on try, reducing the wait time to seconds.
  - See this query for comparison of submission times between VCS vs Lando push: [https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/queries/94718?p\_date=d\_last\_30\_days#234092](https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/queries/94718?p_date=d_last_30_days#234092)

- Connor Sheehan announced a new workflow for requesting and landing uplift revisions via Phabricator/moz-phab/Lando.
  - Mathew Hodson wrote a patch to avoid updating the Phabricator repo associated with a revision, eliminating a papercut where the repo may change when updating a revision with the new workflow.

- Connor Sheehan clarified the text describing the origin of merge conflicts, so it is more obvious which patch has a conflict on landing and added a hint about using a rebase to fix the problem.
- Connor Sheehan taught Lando to treat 500 errors from [hg.mozilla.org](http://hg.mozilla.org) as temporary failures, meaning they will stay in the landing queue instead of requiring a re-queueing from the developer.

### Release Engineering ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/6/f/6f19f922a5d7110ae3f2d6cec9849c966de14a90.png) and Management ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/9/4/945aa6ac1e37cb0ebff55d9fa21387ca5d7ccb70.png)

- Ben Hearsum and Heitor Neiva have finished the bulk of the work for [macOS Attribution](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NLobogbVfSYofcm7b61tesTirlXpmxwIRYd6Gsd3tt8/edit#heading=h.2wvekawj4lm5), and are currently rolling it out to Nightly & Beta. This work enhances our ability to gain insights into our onboarding funnel on macOS.
- Gabriel Bustamante published a post about the [Firefox Nightly .deb Package](https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2023/10/30/introducing-mozillas-firefox-nightly-deb-packages-for-debian-based-linux-distributions/) on the Nightly blog. In 4 days, we have [converted 8% of our DAU](https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/dashboard/mozilla-s-deb-package-uptake-dau-bug-1799516-?p_normalized_channels=%5B%22nightly%22%5D) on the Linux Nightly channel.
- Ahal [implemented changes](https://github.com/mozilla-releng/scriptworker-scripts/pull/844) in [Treescript](https://github.com/mozilla-releng/scriptworker-scripts/tree/master/treescript) to support using the Github API. This work is in preparation to remove Releng’s Github bot accounts in favour of Github Apps
- To support the previous point, Ahal also created a new [simple-github](http://github.com/mozilla-releng/simple-github) Python client for easy app authentication and API access
- Geoff Brown and the Android team switched Fenix Nightly to a new format: AAB. The old format had a 100-MB size limit and we were a few MB away from reaching it. The new format bumps the limit to 150 MB while shrinking Fenix by a quarter.
- Release Management can now ship Firefox without requiring Release Engineering for the last step (balrog signoff)

### Version Control ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/2/1/2129b65c45fbcda2e645b8e00f6cae67e6469547.png)

- Following significant effort across multiple Engineering Effectiveness teams the proposal to migrate from Mercurial to Git was approved and announced.
- Connor Sheehan upgraded Mercurial to version 6.5.2 on [hg.mozilla.org](http://hg.mozilla.org), giving a boost to try push performance.

### mozregression ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/7/c/7c6485d9807f27feb8122cfacdc994b16df7beeb.png)

- Zeid added support for [fenix](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1556042), [focus](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1852620), and [thunderbird-l10n](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1760826) nightlies in mozregression
- Zeid added support for [URL parameter](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1852787) in fenix, focus, and fennec
- Zeid added Python 3.12 support, dropped Python 3.7 support, and upgraded various core packages

### Other ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/mozilla/original/3X/9/f/9fe53a292e7d79fbd03a4416b36b53a4a22d2310.png)

- Firefox source docs sphinx version [updated to version 5.3](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1750450)

Thanks for reading and see you next month!