This directory contains the implementation of the Firefox Health Report (FHR).
Firefox Health Report is a background service that collects application metrics and periodically submits them to a central server.
healthreporter.jsm contains the main interface for FHR, the HealthReporter type. An instance of this is created by the data reporting service. See /services/datareporting/.
providers.jsm contains numerous Metrics.Provider and Metrics.Measurement used for collecting application metrics. If you are looking for the FHR probes, this is where they are.
Preferences controlling behavior of Firefox Health Report live in the datareporting.healthreport. branch.
Some important preferences are:
- service.enabled - Controls whether the entire health report service runs. The overall service performs data collection, storing, and submission. This is the primary kill switch for Firefox Health Report outside of the build system variable. i.e. if you are using an official Firefox build and wish to disable FHR, this is what you should change.
- uploadEnabled - Whether uploading of data is enabled. This is the preference the checkbox in the UI reflects. If this is disabled, FHR still collects data - it just doesn't upload it.
If the entire service is disabled, you lose data collection. This means that data analysis won't be available because there is no data to analyze!
Firefox Health Report providers are registered via the category manager. See HealthReportComponents.manifest for providers defined in this directory.
Essentially, the category manager receives the name of a JS type and the URI of a JSM to import that exports this symbol. At run-time, the providers registered in the category manager are instantiated. This allows for a loose coupling of providers which in turns makes managing the code behind the providers much simpler.
There are many legal and privacy concerns with this code, especially around the data that is submitted. Changes to submitted data should be signed off by responsible parties.