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Anonymous gathering of user analytics

Currently analytics is disabled for Choosenim. It is expected to be turned back on once we've sorted out if we want to continue with Google analytics or not and a new account has been set up for whatever analytics provider we choose. Your choice about whether to participate in analytics is still recorded locally so updating choosenim in the future might re-enable analytics if you have agreed to it. The rest of this document is kept in its original form for legacy, but does no longer apply:

Starting with version 0.3.0, choosenim has the ability to gather anonymous aggregate user behaviour analytics and to report them to Google Analytics.

This is entirely optional and is "opt-neutral", that is choosenim will ask you to decide whether you want to participate in this data gathering without offering a default option. You must choose.

Why?

This is the most straightforward way to gather information about Nim's users directly. It allows us to be aware of the platforms where Nim is being used and any installation issues that our users are facing.

Overall the data we collect allows us to prioritise fixes and features based on how people are using choosenim. For example:

  • If there is a high exception count on specific platforms, we can prioritise fixing it for the next release.
  • Collecting the OS version allows us to decide which platforms to prioritise and support.

What is collected?

At a high level we currently collect a number of events, exception counts and build and download timings.

To be more specific, we record the following information:

  • OS information, for example: Mac OS X v10.11 El Capitan or Linux 4.11.6-041106-generic x86_64.
  • The command-line arguments passed to choosenim, for example choosenim --nimbleDir:~/myNimbleDir stable.
  • Events when a build is started, when it fails and when it succeeds.
  • Build time in seconds and download time in seconds (including the URL that was downloaded).
  • The choosenim version.

For each user a new UUID is generated so there is no way for us or Google to identify you. The UUID is used to measure user counts.

Where is the data sent?

The recorded data is sent to Google Analytics over HTTPS.

Who has access?

The analytics are currently only accessible to the maintainers of choosenim. At the minute this only includes @dom96.

Summaries of the data may be released in the future to the public.

Where is the code?

The code is viewable in telemetry.nim.

The reporting is done asynchronously and will fail fast to avoid any delay in execution.

Opting in

To opt-in simply answer "yes" or "y" to the following question:

Prompt: Can choosenim record and send anonymised telemetry data? [y/n]
    ... Anonymous aggregate user analytics allow us to prioritise
    ... fixes and features based on how, where and when people use Nim.
    ... For more details see: https://goo.gl/NzUEPf.
Answer:

If you answer "no" and then change your mind, you can always have choosenim ask you again by removing the analytics file in the choosenim directory, usually rm ~/.choosenim/analytics should do the trick.

Opting out

Choosenim analytics help us and leaving them on is appreciated. However, we understand if you don't feel comfortable having them on.

To opt out simply answer "no" or "n" to the following question:

Prompt: Can choosenim record and send anonymised telemetry data? [y/n]
    ... Anonymous aggregate user analytics allow us to prioritise
    ... fixes and features based on how, where and when people use Nim.
    ... For more details see: https://goo.gl/NzUEPf.
Answer:

You can also set the CHOOSENIM_NO_ANALYTICS or DO_NOT_TRACK variable in your environment:

export CHOOSENIM_NO_ANALYTICS=1
# or
export DO_NOT_TRACK=1