[tor-dev] HFOSS as Wesleyan this summer

[Damian Johnson]

Hi Megan, hi Erik, glad to have you working with us this summer!

First a bit of a project introduction is probably in order. Stem is a
python controller library for tor. Like its predecessor, TorCtl [1],
it uses tor's control protocol [2] to help developers program against
the tor process, enabling them to build things similar to Vidalia [3]
and arm [4].

Most of stem's core bits (process communication with tor, asynchronous
message handling, etc) are done, and development is now focused on the
wrapper around that which makes for a developer-friendly API. There's
still a ton of work to do, and currently three people hacking on the
project...

* Damian (project author)
* Ravi (GSoC student) - Working on a grab bag of stem related tasks
including the general controller, some descriptor parsing, and
migrating the first client (arm) over to stem. [5]
* Beck (volunteer) - Doing a deep dive into the crypto behind
descriptor validation. [6][7]

Karsten, Ravi, and I just updated stem's development wiki yesterday so
it should be reasonably up to date...
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/stem

Codebase:
https://gitweb.torproject.org/stem.git

So my first question is, what are your interests? It seems that most
people either lean toward research or application, and we have a lot
to do that fit both.

To start with please take a look at the wiki's bugs and improvements
sections. Those are bite sized tasks that should be reasonably small
and start immersing you in the codebase. After that, both the
metrics-lib tasks (more research focused) or porting the tor
interpretor (more application) would be great projects.

Here's a brief overview of the communication channels we use:

- #tor and #tor-dev on OFTC: we're most active on irc, so I definitely
suggest being in these channels [8]

- tor-talk [9] is our user mailing list which is somewhat high volume.

- tor-dev [10] is a lower volume development list and a good place for
technical discussions. Unless something is private please include this
in your email cc.

Hope this helps, and again - welcome! -Damian

PS. I highly suggest introducing yourself to this list. The more
you're involved with the tor community the better, and we'd be
thrilled if you stuck around after your project to become core tor
developers!

[1] https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en#project-torctl
[2] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/control-spec.txt
[3] https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en#project-vidalia
[4] http://www.atagar.com/arm/
[5] https://www.torproject.org/about/gsocProposal/gsoc12-proposal-stemImprovements.html
[6] https://trac.torproject.org/5810
[7] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2012-May/003510.html
[8] https://www.torproject.org/about/contact.html.en#irc
[9] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk/
[10] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev/