Android build script configuration options

This chapter describes build configuration options that control the behavior of the Glean Kotlin SDK's Gradle plugin. These options are not usually required for normal use.

Options can be turned on by setting a variable on the Gradle ext object before applying the Glean Gradle plugin.

gleanBuildDate

Overwrite the auto-generated build date.

If set to 0 a static UNIX epoch time will be used. If set to a ISO8601 datetime string it will use that date. Note that any timezone offset will be ignored and UTC will be used. For other values it will throw an error.

ext.gleanBuildDate = "2022-01-03T17:30:00"

allowMetricsFromAAR

Normally, the Glean Kotlin SDK looks for metrics.yaml and pings.yaml files in the root directory of the Glean-using project. However, in some cases, these files may need to ship inside the dependencies of the project. For example, this is used in the engine-gecko component to grab the metrics.yaml from the geckoview AAR.

ext.allowMetricsFromAAR = true

When this flag is set, every direct dependency of your library will be searched for a metrics.yaml file, and those metrics will be treated as the metrics as if they were defined by your library. That is, API wrappers accessible from your library will be generated for those metrics.

The metrics.yaml can be added to the dependency itself by calling this on each relevant build variant:

variant.packageLibraryProvider.get().from("${topsrcdir}/path/metrics.yaml")

gleanGenerateMarkdownDocs

The Glean Kotlin SDK can automatically generate Markdown documentation for metrics and pings defined in the registry files, in addition to the metrics API code.

ext.gleanGenerateMarkdownDocs = true

Flipping the feature to true will generate a metrics.md file in $projectDir/docs at build-time. In general this is not necessary for projects using Mozilla's data ingestion infrastructure: in those cases human-readable documentation will automatically be viewable via the Glean Dictionary.

gleanDocsDirectory

The gleanDocsDirectory can be used to customize the path of the documentation output directory. If gleanGenerateMarkdownDocs is disabled, it does nothing. Please note that only the metrics.md will be overwritten: any other file available in the target directory will be preserved.

ext.gleanDocsDirectory = "$rootDir/docs/user/telemetry"

gleanYamlFiles

By default, the Glean Gradle plugin will look for metrics.yaml and pings.yaml files in the same directory that the plugin is included from in your application or library. To override this, ext.gleanYamlFiles may be set to a list of explicit paths.

ext.gleanYamlFiles = ["$rootDir/glean-core/metrics.yaml", "$rootDir/glean-core/pings.yaml"]

gleanExpireByVersion

Expire the metrics and pings by version, using the provided major version.

If enabled, expiring metrics or pings by date will produce an error.

ext.gleanExpireByVersion = 25

Different products have different ways to compute the product version at build-time. For this reason the Glean Gradle plugin cannot provide an automated way to detect the product major version at build time. When using the expiration by version feature in Android, products must provide the major version by themselves.

gleanPythonEnvDir

By default, the Glean Gradle plugin will manage its own Python virtualenv in $gradleUserHomeDir/glean to install glean_parser. By specifying a path in ext.gleanPythonEnvDir you can reuse an existing Python virtualenv.

ext.gleanPythonEnvDir = "$buildDir/externallyManagedVenv"

glean_parser must be available in that virtualenv, the Gradle plugin will make no attempt at installing it.