[tor-dev] TBB Gentoo ebuild

Sun Aug 12 22:28:42 UTC 2012

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Alessandro Di Federico <ale at clearmind.me>wrote:

> Hi, I'm trying to put up an ebuild for the Tor Browser Bundle for
> Gentoo. As you may know an ebuild is a script which automates the build
> of a certain application. We already have something in Portage [2] (the
> official ebuild repository) but it's in an experimental state and we
> want to make sure that it's something useful and not harmful.
>
> So I'd like to know your opinion about the idea as whole (is it a good
> idea at all to build by yourself the TBB instead of using the official
> one?) and what could be the main problems arising in such an operation.
> So:
>
>      1. Can you name a list of tools to fingerprint a browser so we can
>         compare our ebuild with the official TBB?
>      2. Which version should we use? We were planning to offer both the
>         current official release (even if TBB for Linux is currently in
>         beta) and something more recent, even if AFAIK this would be for
>         testing purpose only and could weaken anonymity and
>         untrackability.
>      3. We plan to use the system version of the Tor client, in my
>         understanding it should not be a problem to use a Tor client
>         with a version different from the one officially released, but I
>         could be wrong. We also plan to exclude vidalia (and the
>         "0015-Make-Tor-Browser-exit-when-not-launched-from-Vidalia.patch"
> patch).
>      4. We have a different ebuild for the Firefox profile directory (so
>         if it's not installed the HTTPS Everywhere plugin won't be
>         installed), is this a good idea or would it be better to
>         integrate them?
>      5. Gentoo build system offers USE flags, which are options that
>         allow to customize the way the package is built. These are the
>         USE flag available for the standard Firefox ebuild in Gentoo,
>         which is the base for our build of the TBB:
>              1. alsa: Adds support for media-libs/alsa-lib (Advanced
>                 Linux Sound Architecture)
>              2. bindist: Disable official Firefox branding (icons, name)
>                 which are not binary-redistributable according to
>                 upstream.
>              3. custom-cflags: Build with user-specified CFLAGS
>                 (unsupported)
>              4. custom-optimization: Fine-tune custom compiler
>                 optimizations, setting this is not recommended.
>              5. dbus: Enable dbus support for anything that needs it
>                 (gpsd, gnomemeeting, etc)
>              6. debug: Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and
>                 extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces
>                 see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/backtraces.xml
>              7. ipc: Use inter-process communication between tabs and
>                 plugins. Allows for greater stability in case of plugin
>                 crashes
>              8. libnotify: Enable desktop notification support
>              9. minimal:  Prevent sdk and headers from being installed
>             10. pgo: Add support for profile-guided optimization using
>                 gcc-4.5, for faster binaries. This option will double
>                 the compile time.
>             11. startup-notification: Enable application startup event
>                 feedback mechanism
>             12. system-sqlite: Use the system-wide dev-db/sqlite
>                 installation with secure-delete enabled
>             13. webm: Use system media-libs/libvpx for HTML5 WebM video
>                 support.
>             14. wifi: Enable wireless network functions
>
>         Looking at the TBB build script this the combination of USE
>         flags to make as similar as possible to the official release
>         (minus means the USE flag is disabled): -pgo -debug -bindist
>         -custom-optimization -crashreporter webm ipc system-sqlite
>         -wifi. I'm planning to remove the possibility to configure these
>         use flags.
>         Do you agree? For further details you can take a look at the
>         ebuild [1], which should be understandable. Take a look also at
>         the current ebuild for TBB [2].
>
> Is there something else we should pay attention to in the build process
> or in general?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Alessandro Di Federico
>
> [1]
> http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/www-client/firefox/firefox-10.0.6.ebuild?view=markup
>
> http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/eclass/mozconfig-3.eclass?view=markup
> [2]
> http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/www-client/torbrowser/torbrowser-13.0-r1.ebuild?view=markup
>
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>

Hi Alessandro,

After thinking about this for a little bit, here's my 2 cents. =)

1) The ebuild is specifically for building the Tor browser, not the bundle.
The package name of the ebuild states this but the email mentions the
bundle.
2) One of the best reasons for using the bundle is that it is
self-contained. If you want to use the bundle for anonymity you can easily
do this and then discard it will little trace. This becomes much more
difficult with a system-level install.
3) On the other hand, I see no reason to restrict a security-conscious user
from using a more secure browser, as long as they understand the
trade-offs. However, torprofile should not be an optional USE flag. Only
adding some patches from upstream does not make it the Torbrowser.
4) Given 3), is there a reason Tor is not at least an optional RDEPEND for
torbrowser via a USE flag (or another way)?
5) If you did/do intend to create an ebuild for the TBB and not just the
browser, it should provide the exact same experience as if the user
downloaded it from torproject.org. I think this should include Vidalia
launching Torbrowser once the network is configured.
6) Make sure the ebuild references Tor and not TOR

However, I think because of 1) it's difficult to provide a little better
feedback. Is your goal to only provide an alternative browser or are you
attempting to provide the full bundle?

Thanks,
- Matt
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