Re: Tor Browser

[ng0 <ng0@we.make.ritual.n0.is>]

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> ng0@we.make.ritual.n0.is skribis:
>
>> Ludovic Courtès writes:
>
> [...]
>
>>> I suppose TB contains a script that does all that, right?  Would it work
>>> to simply run it?  If it invokes wget/curl, then this needs to be
>>> replaced, but the rest should be fine.
>>
>> It's not that easy I'm afraid.
>> Currently they use a gitian build, as described in this README[0],
>> which the person maintaining the torbrowser ebuild for Gentoo out
>> of portage replicates and follows in parts.
>> It can't be followed completely, as `builders/tor-browser-bundle'
>> requires a checkout of gitian of the torproject.org
>>
>> So we have to look at what they do and recreate this build
>> procedure, there's no individual Makefile, the releases are
>> created in VMs.
>>
>> Dependencies are kept up to date here[1].
>>
>> This[2] is the script connecting/using gitian for gnu-linux releases.
>>
>> The Makefile just runs the corresponding scripts.
>
> Gitian is about building binaries.  There must be some script somewhere
> to apply the relevant patches to the source first, before one builds it,
> no?
>
>>> It’s unfortunate that there’s no ready-to-build TB tarball, that would
>>> simplify things for us.
>>
>> Yes.. But I think icecat suffers from the same problem, only that
>> icecat tarballs/binaries are built using a bash script applying
>> all that's needed to the firefox sources again.
>
> IceCat publishes source tarballs that, AIUI, are produced essentially by
> running a script that patches Firefox’s code base (same approach for
> Linux-libre.)
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

Torbrowser is due to recent events and focusing on something much
bigger (email introducing this will follow soon) not so high on
my priority list.
In fact tor circuits are so unreliable (at least it became very
annoying dealing with the connection amount of skipped circuits)
lately that I think of moving the things I use hidden-services
for to gnunet-vpn as soon as I find time to work around this on
the server.

However I will still find the relevant dirs and files so someone
I told about this might start working on it and proxy their work
through me to us (that's due to another reason I'd like to
address later).. If not, anyone else is welcome to spot this
email and start working.

Licenses used:
https://gitweb.torproject.org/builders/tor-browser-bundle.git/tree/Bundle-Data/Docs/Licenses

I think these are also relevant:
https://gitweb.torproject.org/builders/tor-browser-bundle.git/tree/gitian/patches?id=d79acaf07209445b641061b09257a0ed0dd58340

Now I wonder if it'd be enough to just inherit icecat, replace
the source, apply some additional patches and it justworks™

I hope it's that easy.

--
♥Ⓐ  ng0
For non-prism friendly talk find me on
psyced.org / loupsycedyglgamf.onion