#21704: Warn users when installing Tor Browser based on ESR 52 on not SSE2 capable
Windows machines
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Reporter: gk | Owner: tbb-team
Type: enhancement | Status: new
Priority: Medium | Milestone:
Component: Applications/Tor Browser | Version:
Severity: Normal | Resolution:
Keywords: ff52-esr | Actual Points:
Parent ID: | Points:
Reviewer: | Sponsor: Sponsor4
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Comment (by cypherpunks):
Replying to [comment:8 gk]:
> Replying to [comment:6 cypherpunks]:
> > Replying to [comment:3 gk]:
> > > Replying to [comment:2 cypherpunks]:
> > > > Well, it seems you've decided to follow Mozilla blindly in all its
decisions, good or bad. But it's a cul-de-sac.
> > > > Is there any chance that you could change your mind?
> > > > If Mozilla is doing something wrong in a hurry, and you see it,
why don't you tell them about it?
> > > > If they want to make supplementary things mandatory (e.g. SSE2),
when other FOSS devs are doing the opposite, why don't you mind?
> > > > If they advertise the worst proprietary things in history (SSE2,
needed to be "fixed" by SSE3, and Pentium 4, yes, even Intel confirmed
that) in 2017(!), why nobody asks what's going on?
> > > > So, having ESR52-based TBB cross-compiled and operational (w/o
SSE2), why do you still drag those ### patches into Tor Browser, even when
Mozilla requires them for Windows only?
> > > > Don't break the rules, please.
> > >
> > > Thanks for pointing this out. Actually, we only want to have this
for Windows right now, as Linux at least won't break until ESR 59
(https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1274196). I am updating the
ticket accordingly.
> > Huh, it's not a surprise actually that you prefer not to answer
complex questions... Let's hope it's just because of lack of time,
though...
> > There are a lot of MoCo decisions recently which require public
discussion, but we all know that Mozilla is ignoring the community, thus
forking instead of ESR59 looks more and more actual.
> > As for your decision to break only Windows now, it looks no good.
Despite your communication with mozdevs, it seems you don't know the story
about this design decision, but you may ask to tell you about it.
> > Shortly, Windows won't break until ESR59 too, because it was required
for MSVS 2015u2 and opt-in Rust (msvs target available only).
>
> Have you tried to compile it with non-MSVC? If you e.g. use mingw-w64
you'd see pretty fast that that statement is wrong:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1331335. Thus, we need SSE2
support unless we want to specifically patch code for non-SSE2 support. In
addition to that, not following Mozilla here has the great risk of getting
security fixes that rely in their Windows variant on SSE2. We'd have to
backport those fixes as well while being under time pressure which I think
we don't want to risk.
Those were just the claims of mozdevs... so we can't trust them, you see.
(But, actually, ANGLE is a google's bug.)
Unfortunately, Mozilla started to break everything before the ESR, but it
doesn't mean we should join...
The risk of sec patches adding unconditional SSE2-specific code rewritten
for Win only is almost zero.
--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21704#comment:10>
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