torbrowser

torbrowser

[ng0]

I'm currently occupying the time where I don't study various things and
debug gnunet-service with packaging torbrowser.

So Gentoo (inofficially, 'torbrowser-overlay'[1]) uses the pre-build
archives found on dist.torproject.org in combination with a git checkout
and the torbrowser + firefox patches done by Gentoo devs[1.1].

NixOS in Nixpkgs[2] makes use of patchelf to just fix up the prebuild
variant found on dist.torproject.org.


I suspect that the way Nix 'fixes' this is a no-go for us.

My idea is now to just reconstruct what torproject does, from the git
checkout of torbrowser[3] and eventually later fix Guix specific issues
and fine tuning (freedom issues etc etc). 


Cloning takes a rather long time, this is where Andy's shallow-clone
would be useful, which is where I ran into issue and delayed re-working
this for now. If someone is interested I can post the patch which
applied on master recently.



1: An overlay can be compared to what we have as 'GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH',
   distributed in official and inofficial forms.
1.1: The raw data of the ebuild can be seen here, excluding eclasses:
   https://data.gpo.zugaina.org/torbrowser/www-client/torbrowser/torbrowser-45.7.0_p650.ebuild
2: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/3d104ab2b3e578cb4599b6fffbcc019b09547521/pkgs/tools/security/tor/torbrowser.nix
3: http://dccbbv6cooddgcrq.onion/tor-browser.git

Re: torbrowser

[Ludovic Courtès]

ng0 <contact.ng0@cryptolab.net> skribis:

> NixOS in Nixpkgs[2] makes use of patchelf to just fix up the prebuild
> variant found on dist.torproject.org.
>
>
> I suspect that the way Nix 'fixes' this is a no-go for us.

Indeed.  :-)

> My idea is now to just reconstruct what torproject does, from the git
> checkout of torbrowser[3] and eventually later fix Guix specific issues
> and fine tuning (freedom issues etc etc). 

Sounds like a plan.

> Cloning takes a rather long time, this is where Andy's shallow-clone
> would be useful, which is where I ran into issue and delayed re-working
> this for now. If someone is interested I can post the patch which
> applied on master recently.

If you’ve made changes to what Andy posted back then, or if it doesn’t
work as you want, please post and make it clear what’s left to address.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: torbrowser

[dian_cecht]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2017 15:14:59 +0000
ng0 <contact.ng0@cryptolab.net> wrote:
> My idea is now to just reconstruct what torproject does, from the git
> checkout of torbrowser and eventually later fix Guix specific
> issues and fine tuning (freedom issues etc etc).

Would it be possible to grab the patches Torbrowser uses against
Firefox and simply try to apply them to IceCat? I don't know exactly
what version of FF Icecat and Torbrowser build off of, but if that
could work it might make life a bit easier.

Alternativly, maybe applying the icecat patches to Torbrowser might
work, too.

Re: torbrowser

[ng0]

On 17-03-06 16:47:26, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> ng0 <contact.ng0@cryptolab.net> skribis:
> 

> > Cloning takes a rather long time, this is where Andy's shallow-clone
> > would be useful, which is where I ran into issue and delayed re-working
> > this for now. If someone is interested I can post the patch which
> > applied on master recently.
> 
> If you’ve made changes to what Andy posted back then, or if it doesn’t
> work as you want, please post and make it clear what’s left to address.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

Too little experience with debugging another persons style of writing
Guile. There are issues I can't figure out with only little time
spending on the code and the changes in the last 2 years in the file. I
would have to ask Andy what this and that was meant to express or
achieve, etc.
I will send in the patch, hoping that it still applies after the latest
changes.
I only changed parts of the code so that it's similar to what the
original patch (which no longer applies after 2 years) changed.
Debugging some things here and there and personal matters take up too
much time, so it's not effective if I work on this.
Patch will be send either tonight or tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks!

Re: torbrowser

[ng0]

On 17-03-06 08:06:52, dian_cecht@zoho.com wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Mar 2017 15:14:59 +0000
> ng0 <contact.ng0@cryptolab.net> wrote:
> > My idea is now to just reconstruct what torproject does, from the git
> > checkout of torbrowser and eventually later fix Guix specific
> > issues and fine tuning (freedom issues etc etc).
> 
> Would it be possible to grab the patches Torbrowser uses against
> Firefox and simply try to apply them to IceCat? I don't know exactly
> what version of FF Icecat and Torbrowser build off of, but if that
> could work it might make life a bit easier.
> 
> Alternativly, maybe applying the icecat patches to Torbrowser might
> work, too.
> 
> 

Not really. Icecat is just too old, and the firefox version torbrowser
is based on is not compatible with the one icecat uses. I would not want
the extra work to backport patches.

So far, I haven't investigated all possible ways, it seems too much work
to cherry-pick what torbrowser does to firefox. as they seem to maintain
all in the repository it could work out to just build from there. Their
release workflow (not automated but well documented) includes pulling in
from firefox, so there has to be firefox code in the repository.
The time and effort to base this on icecat is not worth it... unless
someone wants to start an icecat-torbrowser which *closely* tracks
torbrowser and does not become so unresponsive to bugs/issues like
icecat currently is.
And in both cases, the browser I assemble, and in the not-existing case
of a blend of torbrowser,I want to compare against upstream releases to
see how much we would differ and how much it'll affect fingerprinting
etc.
This difference will go into the description, as it can't be described
as a 1:1 port of torbrowser.

Re: torbrowser

[ng0]

ng0 transcribed 1.7K bytes:
> On 17-03-06 08:06:52, dian_cecht@zoho.com wrote:
> > On Mon, 6 Mar 2017 15:14:59 +0000
> > ng0 <contact.ng0@cryptolab.net> wrote:
> > > My idea is now to just reconstruct what torproject does, from the git
> > > checkout of torbrowser and eventually later fix Guix specific
> > > issues and fine tuning (freedom issues etc etc).
[snip]
(Don't consider this "necro-bumping".)

The maintainer of the ebuild for Gentoo in the torbrowser-overlay
just gave me the last missing pieces of information for building torbrowser.
Recent commit message subjects in the upstream torbrowser repository
make me assume there will be no issues for integration into Guix master.
As long as the final build ressembles what I have talked about with them
we can even name it torbrowser and have the official design.

I hope to be done with this by summer, but you never know with browser.
But it's just a Firefox ESR deriv., so (ideally) it should just be a matter
of 1 or 2 weekends.
-- 
A88C8ADD129828D7EAC02E52E22F9BBFEE348588
https://n0.is/~ng0

Re: torbrowser

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

ng0 writes:

> The maintainer of the ebuild for Gentoo in the torbrowser-overlay
> just gave me the last missing pieces of information for building torbrowser.
> Recent commit message subjects in the upstream torbrowser repository
> make me assume there will be no issues for integration into Guix master.
> As long as the final build ressembles what I have talked about with them
> we can even name it torbrowser and have the official design.
>
> I hope to be done with this by summer, but you never know with browser.
> But it's just a Firefox ESR deriv., so (ideally) it should just be a matter
> of 1 or 2 weekends.

This is great, ng0!  Thank you! :)

Re: torbrowser

[Catonano]

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2018-03-07 16:32 GMT+01:00 Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org
>:

> ng0 writes:
>
> > The maintainer of the ebuild for Gentoo in the torbrowser-overlay
> > just gave me the last missing pieces of information for building
> torbrowser.
> > Recent commit message subjects in the upstream torbrowser repository
> > make me assume there will be no issues for integration into Guix master.
> > As long as the final build ressembles what I have talked about with them
> > we can even name it torbrowser and have the official design.
> >
> > I hope to be done with this by summer, but you never know with browser.
> > But it's just a Firefox ESR deriv., so (ideally) it should just be a
> matter
> > of 1 or 2 weekends.
>
> This is great, ng0!  Thank you! :)
>
>

I want to express my gratitude too

I cold even try to build your thing if I knew where it is ;-)

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Re: torbrowser

[ng0]

Catonano transcribed 2.4K bytes:
> 2018-03-07 16:32 GMT+01:00 Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org
> >:
> 
> > ng0 writes:
> >
> > > The maintainer of the ebuild for Gentoo in the torbrowser-overlay
> > > just gave me the last missing pieces of information for building
> > torbrowser.
> > > Recent commit message subjects in the upstream torbrowser repository
> > > make me assume there will be no issues for integration into Guix master.
> > > As long as the final build ressembles what I have talked about with them
> > > we can even name it torbrowser and have the official design.
> > >
> > > I hope to be done with this by summer, but you never know with browser.
> > > But it's just a Firefox ESR deriv., so (ideally) it should just be a
> > matter
> > > of 1 or 2 weekends.

Correction: Never underestimate web browser debugging. It's been a couple of hours
only so far though. Devil is in the details, but I'm making progress.

> > This is great, ng0!  Thank you! :)
> >
> >
> 
> I want to express my gratitude too
> 
> I cold even try to build your thing if I knew where it is ;-)

Torbrowser? The package definition is on my harddrive, so nowhere
to be found for now.
-- 
A88C8ADD129828D7EAC02E52E22F9BBFEE348588
https://n0.is/~ng0