Feature #7087: Do not bundle Tor Launcher in the main Tails Git repository

Feature #7087

Do not bundle Tor Launcher in the main Tails Git repository

Added by intrigeri 2014-04-15 10:39:26 . Updated 2015-05-12 18:46:37 .

Status:

Resolved

Priority:

Elevated

Assignee:

Category:

Tor configuration

Target version:

Tails_1.4

Start date:

2014-04-15

Due date:

% Done:

100%

Feature Branch:

feature/8925-tor-0.2.6

Type of work:

Code

Blueprint:

Starter:

Affected tool:

Tor Launcher

Deliverable for:

Description

Back when bridges support was merged at the last minute for 0.23, it was considered acceptable on the short term to simply add a copy of the Tor Launcher into the main Tails repository. This was supposed to be a short-term hack that we will get rid of soon, hence this ticket so that it’s not forgotten.

For the record, bundling Tor Launcher in the main Tails repository has the following problems:

it bloats the repo a bit (we could probably live with that)
it makes reviewing painful: one has to review changes in our Tor Launcher repo first, and then compare with the copy that was pushed into the main repo
I could not find any documentation about how to actually do the copy (not sure it’s a trivial copy, or if one needs to run some kind of make command first)

There are several ways we could fix this:

build a Debian package for Tor Launcher
use a Git submodule

I (intrigeri) am not convinced a .deb would be the best way to integrate Tor Launcher into Tails, and doing so adds quite some painful, repetitive work to the release process. So perhaps a submodule would be better, assuming our build system (including Jenkins setup, Vagrant) supports it, and assuming it can be documented so that every contributor can understand how the whole thing works.

Subtasks

Related issues

Related to Tails - Feature #7036: Move custom software to our main Git repository	In Progress
Related to Tails - ~~Bug #7283~~: Use upstream solution for Tor Launcher: Set ClientTransportPlugin according to the bridge entries	Resolved	2014-05-26
Related to Tails - ~~Feature #7620~~: Drop Tor Launcher patch that relabels the finish button	Resolved	2014-07-19
Blocked by Tails - ~~Feature #7934~~: Upgrade to Tor 0.2.6.x	Resolved	2014-09-22