Crash reporting with Sentry

If there is anything in this document that is not clear, is incorrect, or that requires more detail, please file a request through a Github.

Firefox for Fire TV uses Sentry for crash and exception reporting. This kind of reporting gives Mozilla invaluable insight as to why Firefox crashes or incorrectly behaves. It is one of the key methods we use to improve the product in terms of stability.

This page explains how Sentry works, how the various parts interact and what kind of data it sends back to Mozilla.

High-Level Summary

Sentry is an open source crash reporting and aggregation platform. Both the client SDK, github.com/getsentry/sentry-cocoa, and the server, github.com/getsentry/sentry, are open source.

The server is hosted and maintained by Mozilla. There are no third-parties involved, all crash reports to directly from Firefox for Fire TV to the Sentry server hosted by Mozilla.

On the client side Sentry is invisible. There are no parts to interact with. It reports crashes and fatal errors back to Mozilla in the background. Sentry is enabled when the Send Usage Data switch in the Firefox for Fire TV settings is enabled by the user. By default this switch is enabled, it is an opt-out mechanism.

On the server side there is a dashboard that the Firefox for Fire TV team uses to look at incoming crash reports. The dashboard lets us inspect the crash report in detail and for example see where in the application the crash happened, what version of the application was used and what version of Fire OS was active. Below is an overview of all the attributes that are part of a crash report.