[tor-dev] The Torouter project - where are we now?

[Jacob Appelbaum]

On 04/24/2011 01:14 AM, Runa A. Sandvik wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 24, 2011 at 3:55 AM, Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net> wrote:
>> On 04/23/2011 04:32 PM, Erinn Clark wrote:
>>> * Jacob Appelbaum <jacob at appelbaum.net> [2011:04:21 11:54 -0700]:
>>>> It's a question for what we as a project can handle supporting - when a
>>>> new Tor is released, we'll need to build it unless we rely on upstream
>>>> builds. Runa and I suggest that we (Tor) may want our own OpenWRT
>>>> repository - that by default seems to fall directly on our main build
>>>> person, I think.
>>>
>>> Jake and I discussed this on IRC and the basic summary is that for now we'll
>>> wait and see -- probably longer term we can support maintaining a repository,
>>> if that turns out to be the right route, but my role is going to be mainly
>>> infrastructure related so I can help make sure people are able to do what they
>>> need without blocking on me.
>>
>> One other important point made in that discussion is that no one seems
>> to have time for supporting an entirely new platform for every Tor
>> release. So while The Tor Project may support it - we have no one
>> willing to bell the cat today.
>>
>> What this means practically is that as we've seen with Android, we're
>> going to seriously lag releases as it won't be the responsibility of any
>> single person or group of people. This won't work if we ship our own OS
>> (such as a custom OpenWRT image) and it will simply be difficult if
>> we're just shipping Tor (with or without supporting libraries).
> 
> We already know that we can't rely on upstream builds. If we want to
> our users to have the latest version of Tor, we need to set up an okpg
> repository ourselves.
> 

I'm of a mixed feeling here - we can easily rely on upstream packaging
work but we need to have a commitment inside of Tor to actually support
a repository, if we need to run our own. It's probably the case that for
rapid development, we'll need to do so. Stuff like x-wrt are a hybrid
example where we may be able to have regular builds of Tor. I haven't
really understood the process by which a package is actually ever
compiled by OpenWRT or x-wrt and then shipped to users; the exception is
when OpenWRT cuts a release...

> Jake; it was my impression that you wanted to do this. Is that not the
> case anymore?

I want a lot of things. After talking with Erinn, I'm a little more
enlightened on build issues. No one will take our work and cut a new Tor
release as part of their work flow unless we somehow allocate resources
or indicate that this is a priority.

With that said - I'm happy to handle packaging of Tor on OpenWRT as I've
been working on already. However, that is not enough - we have to
actually have a task that is going to be done regularly - no matter what
OS or hardware choice we make. Android is a good example, we have
repeatedly dropped the ball for a number of (good and bad) reasons. We
should not repeat those mistakes - one of the biggest was simply that we
did lacked a clear support plan - when a security release for Tor is
tagged, Orbot needs to have at least a new Tor binary in a reasonable
amount of time. We have utterly failed at this in a few cases - we
should avoid re-creating this problem with Torouter.

We're adding a new "product" to The Tor Project - one of the things we
need to do is actually plan for the software maintenance phase of that
product. As it stands, I don't believe we have a build machine (see bug
#2969) that either you (Runa) or I have access to. That makes it hard to
build an OpenWRT image or even have a system where we can co-work on
packages together but also where we trust the compiler for cutting a
release.  Speaking of which, we also lack a plan for actually cutting
releases - for a real beta test, I believe we'll really need to solve
this issue. It's not reasonable to ship the Torouter project without
having a good way forward and that includes a solid commitment from
someone or someones that will ensure Tor builds kick off for each major
or security important release.

All the best,
JAke