Intent to Ship: Add bugfix version number to User-Agent string on Bling

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Janice Liu

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Aug 28, 2024, 3:54:00 PMAug 28
to blink-dev
Contact emails

jani...@chromium.org, mike...@chromium.org


Explainer

None. This is a minor change.


Specification

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#field.user-agent


Summary

User Agent (UA) strings in Chromium have been moving towards reducing or freezing information - but until WebKit allows us to implement UA client hints, we propose adding the OS bugfix number to the UA, for compatibility purposes.



Blink component

Chromium>Mobile>iOSWeb


Motivation

The Chrome for iOS User-Agent header only includes the major and minor version numbers, while Safari and Firefox for iOS include the major, minor, and bugfix numbers. We have received a request from external partners to match this pattern, and are aware of at least one platform that relies on having an accurate bugfix version number to ensure the latest security updates are installed.


UA strings in Chromium have been moving towards reducing or freezing information - but until WebKit allows us to implement UA client hints, we propose adding the bugfix number to the UA, for compatibility purposes.


In practice:


Before this change: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_5 like Mac OS X)

AppleWebKit/602.1.50 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/123.0.2924.75

Mobile/14E5239e Safari/602.1



After this change (note the additional “_1” in the OS version token): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_5_1 like Mac OS X)

AppleWebKit/602.1.50 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/123.0.2924.75

Mobile/14E5239e Safari/602.1




Initial public proposal

None


TAG review

None - this is a very simple change and aligns us with what other browsers are shipping.


TAG review status

Not applicable


Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

None



Gecko: No signal (Firefox on iOS already follows this pattern)


WebKit: No signal (mobile Safari already follows this pattern)


Web developers: We have received at least one external partner request for this change.



WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

N/A (this is for iOS)



Debuggability

None



Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

No


Flag name on chrome://flags

None


Finch feature name

kAddBugFixNumber


Non-finch justification

None


Requires code in //chrome?

False


Tracking bug

https://issues.chromium.org/u/1/issues/350426233


Estimated milestones

No milestones specified



Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5084885065400320?gate=5184007944536064


Yoav Weiss (@Shopify)

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Sep 11, 2024, 9:09:41 AMSep 11
to Janice Liu, blink-dev
LGTM

On Wed, Aug 28, 2024 at 9:53 PM Janice Liu <jani...@chromium.org> wrote:
Contact emails

jani...@chromium.org, mike...@chromium.org


Explainer

None. This is a minor change.


Specification

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#field.user-agent


Summary

User Agent (UA) strings in Chromium have been moving towards reducing or freezing information - but until WebKit allows us to implement UA client hints,

:(
 
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Yoav Weiss (@Shopify)

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Sep 11, 2024, 11:47:48 AMSep 11
to Janice Liu, blink-dev
That's LGTM1

Alex Russell

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Sep 11, 2024, 11:50:01 AMSep 11
to blink-dev, Yoav Weiss, blink-dev, Janice Liu
LGTM2, and as someone who has been a sceptic of UA freezing in general (rather than reducing entropy for very old versions), it's good to see this kind of flexibility.

That's LGTM1

LGTM

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Vladimir Levin

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Sep 11, 2024, 11:51:13 AMSep 11
to Alex Russell, blink-dev, Yoav Weiss, Janice Liu
LGTM3

That's LGTM1

LGTM

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