[tor-dev] TorCtl Deprecation and Stem Plans

[Damian Johnson]

Hi all. Just a friendly heads up concerning a couple things going on
in our python controller space.

The first is that Mike and I have decided to deprecate TorCtl [1] and
make it a part of TorFlow (the framework used to support the Bandwidth
Authorities and SoaT). The TorCtl codebase has largely been frozen for
years out of concern for the stability of the Bandwidth Authorities
(which lack any tests).

If you're writing scripts or controller applications for Tor then
you're encouraged to move to either...

* Stem (https://stem.torproject.org/)

Library with a similar design to TorCtl, but friendlier APIs and
documentation. This has reached feature parity with TorCtl and is
still being actively developed, so if there's something it can do to
better suit your needs then please let me know!

* Txtorcon (https://txtorcon.readthedocs.org/)

Twisted controller library written by Meejah, and used in projects
like Ooni Probe.

Both of these libraries have extensive test suites and are being very
actively maintained.

========================================

The second part are my plans regarding Stem. As of early December
we've reached feature completion, covering just about everything in
the control-spec and dir-spec.

Next up is migrating our controllers. So far we've moved arm [2] (the
largest python controller we have) and the consensus-tracker [3].
Other controllers we have queued up to move are TorBEL, Tor Weather,
and the control interpretor.

I've avoided making an initial release announcement for stem because
until we have actual users of the library we won't be sure that we
nailed a nice, intuitive API (and hence, can't promise that it'll be
frozen).

On reflection this is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Stem's API is unlikely to change substantially, and holding off on an
initial release poses a chicken-and-egg situation. Users want a frozen
API before using stem, but we need users before feeling confident
enough to lock down the API.

So here's what I propose. For the next couple months stem will have an
open beta. If you'd like to have input on the future of our python
controller space then please give Stem a try and tell me the
following...

* What pain points did you encounter? Is there anything that you'd
like to see changed or that we're missing?

* If your project is public then please tell me where I can find your
code. I'll review it, both to suggest improvements and see how we can
tweak stem to better suit your needs.

In the unlikely event we make a backward incompatible change I'll
check with the beta participants to be sure we don't break anyone (and
submit fixes if we do).

Thoughts? -Damian

PS. Many thanks to Ravi, Sean, Eoin, Beck, Erik, Megan,
Sathyanarayanan, and everyone else who has helped stem get to this
point. Happy New Year!

[1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/pytorctl.git
[2] http://www.atagar.com/arm/
[3] https://gitweb.torproject.org/atagar/tor-utils.git/blob/HEAD:/consensusTracker.py