Q3 Engineering Progress on Firefox Accounts for Android
We have landed less production code than we anticipated, but we have
made tangible progress. I got married at the end of August, which
reduced my output significantly. It won't happen again :) We changed
UI-focus mid-quarter, which meant leaving several tickets un-finished
while we evaluate our approach.
Development has followed two main lines:
1. Implementing an Android native UI create account/sign in flow,
backed by the Android platform concepts of an Account and Authenticator.
We began implementing native UI but it depends on implementing the
client-side cryptography and "picl-idp protocol" we have specced.
Part way through this effort, we began to re-consider federated
identity in the Firefox Accounts eco-system, which will probably lead
to a native UI re-design.
Therefore, we shifted to focus on:
2. Bolting a new authentication layer onto the existing Android Sync
code-base for syncing against a newly deployed stage Sync 1.1 + new
auth cluster.
We have started to implement the HTTP client protocols needed to
authenticate with the new auth layer, and we have started to update
the existing Android Sync code.
Outcomes:
1. We have the Android platform support for the Account and a stub
Authenticator landed on elm. We have native code for the client-side
cryptography primitives close to landing. We have an un-reviewed
branch that creates a new Firefox Account and authenticates to it.
2. We have HAWK auth protocol support landed on elm. We have a
client for the Mozilla Services token server close to landing, we have
the client-side native code for generating BrowserID assertions under
review, and we have an un-reviewed branch that successfully syncs
against the stage Sync 1.1 + new auth cluster.
Future:
Mina, from the Firefox for Android team, is eager to help with the
client work.
Best,
Nick (for rnewman)
PS. ckarlof -- sorry, it's *way* longer than the 6 lines I promised.
Happy to pare it down.
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