[tor-dev] Joining Tor Project's software infrastructure

[Iain R. Learmonth]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 04, 2016 at 07:11:47PM -0400, Jesse V wrote:
> > I'm also not sure what's the exact policy on gitian and
> > deb.torproject.org, and whether third-party applications (like OnioNS)
> > can be placed there.
> 
> That's fine. It's not a big deal, but I would eventually like to have
> reproducible builds on the official system. For now I have a few ideas
> for reproducibility, so it's not a priority at present.

If the software is stable, and reproducibly built, I would aim for placing
it into the Debian archives. I maintain ooniprobe on deb.torproject.org, but
primarily for Ubuntu users and I would prefer that Debian users are using
the version from the Debian archive.

One issue we run into is that in trying to support older distributions, we
often then have to take on maintaining backports for various packages and in
some cases this is a lot of overhead and careful version number management.

If you wanted to set up your own Debian repository, that would also be an
alternative solution for the short-term.

> 1) I will finish all the primary components and ensure that they all
> mesh together nicely. This involves a lot of testing and changes on my
> end. This is currently where I am.
> 2) I will deploy an alpha build to the approximately dozen volunteers
> that have expressed interest so far. I will distribute RPMs, DEBs, and a
> build of the Tor Browser that includes my libraries. I will help run the
> servers and they can test out the components, particularly the onion
> service and client software.
> 3) Fix bugs and deploy into beta.
> 4) I'll post on tor-dev or tor-relays asking for volunteers to help test
> the server end. This is part where the system starts to become
> decentralized.
> 5) Fix bugs, grow based on interest, add more documentation, expand the
> project page, etc.
> 6) When everything seems stable and feature-complete, announce it so
> that everyone can test out the stable builds.

I cannot see that any of this actually requires the use of Tor Project
infrastructure. If you really cannot set up a Debian repository for
distributing pre-release packages, I can provide you with a simple
repository set up to use.

Thanks,
Iain.