[tor-dev] The future of Tor client software?

[Steven Engler]

Thanks Nick!

On 2023-02-13 09:40, Nick Mathewson wrote:
> We intend that Arti will be usable in multiple deployment environments, 
> including as a daemon that they talk to over an RPC-like protocol 
> (analogous to the current control port) and as an embedded library.  We 
> want applications written in most any reasonable language to be able to 
> use Arti, and to be more or less agnostic about whether they're doing it 
> with an in-process library or over an RPC channel.  Of course, this 
> involves a lot of API work, and there will be a lot of design and 
> prototyping to do. Our plan is to have this part ready for experimental 
> use this year.

Ah okay, this sounds interesting. Having an agnostic interface seems 
nice for applications. If I'm understanding correctly, this would make 
it easy to included an embedded Tor client which is used by default, 
while optionally allowing users to configure it to use a Tor client 
daemon instead, without requiring many code changes in the application.

> Right now, we're starting a working group of interested people to talk 
> about getting all of these APIs right. You can see an initial thread at 
> https://forum.torproject.net/t/defining-an-interface-to-arti/6432 
> <https://forum.torproject.net/t/defining-an-interface-to-arti/6432> with 
> links to different design sketches; pretty soon we hope that there will 
> be a new subforum to work on the issue and discuss more.  I'll follow up 
> with a link once there is (unless somebody else does).

> The forum section is at : https://forum.torproject.net/c/arti-development/30

Thanks for the links, I'll keep an eye on them.

- Steve