Email as a privileged app, sound pref moving into app

[James Burke]

For email, we are looking at converting to a privileged app, and the
biggest change needed is moving the preference for playing a sound on
email send from the Settings app to the Email app. Doing that work now
makes sense for email since the email outbox/async send work is also
changing the flow around sending.

The sound pref move is being tracked in the following bug, as well as
the motivations and benefits of a privileged app:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1016503

While the bug has not been completely sorted out yet, since it does
have an impact outside the email app, just wanted to give notice about
it. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to add them to the
bug.

James

[Fabrice Desré]

There is work ongoing to let privileged apps access a white list of
settings (see bug 846200 and bug 900551). Did you consider using that?

Fabrice

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[Axel Hecht]

You also need settings access still for language switching on-the-fly,
see https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/shared/js/l10n.js#L1339.

Not sure if there's an explicit bug to remove that, now that the gecko
requirements should be met.

Axel

[Staś Małolepszy]

Quoting Axel Hecht (2014-05-30 12:19:12)

> You also need settings access still for language switching on-the-fly,
> see https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/shared/js/l10n.js#L1339.
>
> Not sure if there's an explicit bug to remove that, now that the gecko
> requirements should be met.

That would be bug 1013929:

Use the languagechange event instead of a mozSettings observer
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1013929

I fixed the Gecko dependency erlier this week and the bug has a good
patch in it, so we should be able to land it soon.

-stas

--
@stas

[James Burke]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 11:35 PM, Fabrice Desré <fab...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> There is work ongoing to let privileged apps access a white list of
> settings (see bug 846200 and bug 900551). Did you consider using that?

Yes, but there are some compelling reasons to not go that route:

1) the prefs around whether or not to notify on new mail, which can
generate sound, are already in the email app, so pairing this sound
setting next to those settings makes more sense, is more cohesive for
the user. They know just to look for one place for all the email
settings.

2) it reduces the explicit platform/manifest dependencies for the
email app, so gets closer to the long term goals around apps made with
the web technology.

James

[James Burke]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 11:09 PM, James Burke <jrb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For email, we are looking at converting to a privileged app, and the
> biggest change needed is moving the preference for playing a sound on
> email send from the Settings app to the Email app. Doing that work now
> makes sense for email since the email outbox/async send work is also
> changing the flow around sending.
>
> The sound pref move is being tracked in the following bug, as well as
> the motivations and benefits of a privileged app:
>
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1016503

We landed the pref change so it opens up the email app to be
privileged. Email as privileged runs fine on a device without contacts
permission prompts if it is part of a device install, thanks to bug
1014410.

However I cannot land the manifest type change because of these issues:

[1] Bug 1022768: Privileged apps running in tests trigger permission prompts
[2] Bug 1022760: make DEBUG=1 with Nightly Desktop Firefox does not
work with privileged apps

I appreciate anyone with better knowledge of those pathways how to
route those bugs to the right places or give hints on what needs to be
done for them.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1022768
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1022760

James

[Vivien Nicolas]

Just seen the threads. I answered directly to James on IRC for the issues.

[James Burke]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 10:17 AM, James Burke <jrb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 11:09 PM, James Burke <jrb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> For email, we are looking at converting to a privileged app, and the
>> biggest change needed is moving the preference for playing a sound on
>> email send from the Settings app to the Email app.

The email app is now privileged in master. If you see any problems,
comment in the the bug that switched the manifest property:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1018534

Thanks to Vivien for providing insight into the other bugs.

James

[Ben Francis]

\o/

Nice work guys! I look forward to seeing the Email app in the Firefox Marketplace ;)

Now, which app is next? And who will be the first to go to the next level and turn their Gaia packaged app into a web app so that it could be hosted on the web and still work offline, or even work cross-platform?! ServiceWorker is coming...

The Web API team is listening, tell them what you need!

Ben

James

[DANIEL JESUS COLOMA BAIGES]

This is awesome! 

Are there any concrete plans to move e-mail app to FirefoxOS Marketplace? 

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[Andreas Gal]

The plan is definitely to move this to the marketplace along with anything else that isn’t relevant to operator testing. Once we have a hosted-flavor of packaged apps with extremely efficient delta updates (coming), and crash (exception) reporting and some telemetry we can also start disconnecting the release schedule of such apps from the base system. Email can release more often to fix minor bugs etc.

Thanks,

Andreas

[DANIEL JESUS COLOMA BAIGES]

Great, you have a plan that I like :)  But by concrete I was thinking in specific releases you are targeting to make this happen. Any idea about this? As you know this is something that (if properly managed) is going to make life easier to operators and OEMs… and the sooner we can communicate this is going to happen by FFOS X, the better for FFOS success. 

A side question, sometimes Gaia apps required a specific Gecko version to work. I suppose Marketplace should take care of that, is that work tracked somewhere at Bugzilla?

[Andreas Gal]

On Jun 18, 2014, at 5:05 AM, DANIEL JESUS COLOMA BAIGES <dco...@tid.es> wrote:

Great, you have a plan that I like :)  But by concrete I was thinking in specific releases you are targeting to make this happen. Any idea about this? As you know this is something that (if properly managed) is going to make life easier to operators and OEMs… and the sooner we can communicate this is going to happen by FFOS X, the better for FFOS success.

Lucas is assembling a little strike team to plan out the details and timeline. We are a little busy with 2.1 planning right now but once thats done I suspect Lucas will start working on this. By the way, its great to hear operators will like this. If you guys are keenly interested you could send someone to be part of the planing processes (it should be open anyway).

A side question, sometimes Gaia apps required a specific Gecko version to work. I suppose Marketplace should take care of that, is that work tracked somewhere at Bugzilla?

Yeah, this is one of the things we have to ensure (feature compatibility and detection in the Marketplace).

Thanks,

Andreas

[DANIEL JESUS COLOMA BAIGES]

Comments inline

Thanks!

De: Andreas Gal <andre...@gmail.com>
Fecha: Wednesday 18 June 2014 14:17
Para: DANIEL JESUS COLOMA <dco...@tid.es>
CC: James Burke <jrb...@gmail.com>, Ben Francis <bfra...@mozilla.com>, "dev-...@lists.mozilla.org" <dev-...@lists.mozilla.org>, Lucas Adamski <lada...@mozilla.com>
Asunto: Re: Email as a privileged app, sound pref moving into app

On Jun 18, 2014, at 5:05 AM, DANIEL JESUS COLOMA BAIGES <dco...@tid.es> wrote:

Great, you have a plan that I like :)  But by concrete I was thinking in specific releases you are targeting to make this happen. Any idea about this? As you know this is something that (if properly managed) is going to make life easier to operators and OEMs… and the sooner we can communicate this is going to happen by FFOS X, the better for FFOS success.

Lucas is assembling a little strike team to plan out the details and timeline. We are a little busy with 2.1 planning right now but once thats done I suspect Lucas will start working on this. By the way, its great to hear operators will like this. If you guys are keenly interested you could send someone to be part of the planing processes (it should be open anyway).

>> Yep, we are definitely interested so please let us know when this planning process occurs. As you know, OS OTA updates is not as easy as it should be and having the possibility to update some apps separately would make possible to make users enjoy new features faster.

A side question, sometimes Gaia apps required a specific Gecko version to work. I suppose Marketplace should take care of that, is that work tracked somewhere at Bugzilla?

Yeah, this is one of the things we have to ensure (feature compatibility and detection in the Marketplace).

>> OK, I am particularly concerned about all the work required here and how does it meet “the Web is the platform” motto . We’ll file a bug about this to kick-off the discussion. 

[James Burke]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 8:38 PM, James Burke <jrb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The email app is now privileged in master. If you see any problems,
> comment in the the bug that switched the manifest property:
>
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1018534

Email is now back as a certified app, not likely to revisit privileged
for the foreseeable future. Reasons why can by found by following the
links in this bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1027185

James