Add documentation for field trials

Bug: webrtc:14154
Change-Id: I8866933046bb3c673b55fc8edf5fdbff11b60fad
Reviewed-on: https://webrtc-review.googlesource.com/c/src/+/266481
Reviewed-by: Artem Titov <titovartem@webrtc.org>
Reviewed-by: Harald Alvestrand <hta@webrtc.org>
Commit-Queue: Emil Lundmark <lndmrk@webrtc.org>
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/main@{#37309}
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Emil Lundmark 2022-06-23 10:15:03 +02:00 committed by WebRTC LUCI CQ
parent bf0cbcb8fe
commit c4a35898d9
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# Field trials
<?% config.freshness.owner = 'lndmrk' %?>
<?% config.freshness.reviewed = '2022-06-23' %?>
WebRTC provides some means to alter its default behavior during run-time,
colloquially known as *field trials*. This is foremost used for A/B testing new
features and are related to
[Chromium field trials](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/testing/variations/README.md)
to facilitate interoperability.
A field trial consist of a key-value pair of strings. By convention, the field
trial key is prefixed with `WebRTC-` and each word is capitalized without
spaces. Sometimes the key is further subdivided into a category, for example,
`WebRTC-MyCategory-MyExperiment`. The field trial value is an opaque string and
it is up to the author to define what it represents. There are
[helper functions](https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/+/refs/heads/main/api/field_trials_view.h)
to use a field trial as a boolean, with the string `Enabled` representing true
and `Disabled` representing false. You can also use
[field trial parameters](https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/+/refs/heads/main/rtc_base/experiments/field_trial_parser.h)
if you wish to encode more elaborate data types.
The set of field trials can be instantiated from a single string with the format
`<key-1>/<value-1>/<key-2>/<value-2>/`. Note the final `/` at the end! In
Chromium you can launch with the `--force-fieldtrials` flag to instantiate field
trials this way, for example:
```
--force-fieldtrials="WebRTC-Foo/Enabled/WebRTC-Bar/Disabled/"
```
## Policy
The policy for field trials is:
- A field trial should only be used to test out new code or parameters for a
limited time period. It should not be used for configuring persistent
behavior.
- The field trial must have an end date. The end date may be pushed back if
necessary, but should not be pushed back indefinitely.
- A field trial must be associated with a bug that
- reserves the field trial key,
- is open,
- is assigned to an owner, and
- has the end date specified.

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* Network emulation * Network emulation
* [Implementation](/test/network/g3doc/index.md) * [Implementation](/test/network/g3doc/index.md)
* Performance stats collection * Performance stats collection
* Experimentation
* [Field trials](/g3doc/field-trials.md)