Mobile/Fennec/Android

The Fennec build documentation has moved!
See the most up to date documentation at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Simple_Firefox_for_Android_build

Here is a table of contents of all the in-depth information you might need to find about Firefox for Android development.

New to the community? Welcome! Start here!

Develop

• New contributor page
  • Suggested workflow
• Build documentation
• Testing
• Common tips & how-to's
• Useful addons for development (e.g. copy profile)
• Advanced topics (e.g. special build configs & advanced debugging)
• In-tree Firefox for Android documentation
• Triage
• Metrics

App and development overview

• App Structure: Fennec is a combination of Java frontend code, Javascript glue and display code, and C++ rendering code. Here's a brief 9000m (30'000ft) overview of what each of those parts does.
  • Build Systems: Our app structure results in a complex build process. Moreover, we are in the process of migrating our builds from a custom (Makefile based) build, to using Gradle for the frontend/Java portions of our app. This is a brief description of our parallel build systems and what we're trying to achieve in the future.

Feature development

• Distribution files
• Java telemetry
• Switchboard
• Downloadable Content

Test results

• Treeherder continuous integration
• Coverity static analysis

Build infrastructure

• Task Cluster notes
• `./mach bootstrap` SDK dependencies

General developer resources

• Mercurial for Mozillians
• MozReview

Crash Stats

• The crash-stats page lives at https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/product/FennecAndroid
  • Be careful to select "FennecAndroid" under the product dropdown to see Firefox on Android crashes.
    • Nightly has the name XX.0a1 (e.g. 52.0a1)
    • Aurora has the name XX.0a2 (e.g. 51.0a1 - the number is one lower than nightly)
    • Beta is XX.0bN (e.g. 50.0b12). N is increased every time a new beta is released (usually weekly).
      • Note: Multiple beta versions can be listed under the versions dropdown, the first one listed might not be the currently released beta.
    • Release is XX.0.N (e.g. 49.0.2). N is increased every time there is a dot release, we usually try to avoid dot releases.
  • Beware: a single device (which potentially has a hardware issue and/or a user who has done something strange with their configuration) can result in a crash-spike on nightly, or even aurora - not every crash is something significant.
  • You can view devices that are affected by selecting a crash-signature, then going to "Aggregations", followed by clicking on the "Aggregate on" dropdown and selecting "Android device". Some issues might be device or manufacturer specific.
  • To create a bugzilla entry for a given crash, open a crash report (if you are viewing a signature, go to "reports" and click on one of the items there). From the crash report search for "Bugzilla - Report this bug in" and select the appropriate module.