[tor-project] Tor Browser Bundle on Guix

[Richard Pospesel]

So I think in general we (applications team) don't want to support every possible distribution format out there/be smart 
about which ones we *do* support in terms of maximizing reach/going where the users are.

But that said there are a few downstream re-packagers (Tails, torbrowser-launcher/ BSD, etc) that we don't want to 
break. If this is something you (or someone else) wants to build+maintain, then we can add you to the list of folks who 
get early notification of new browser releases, potentially breaking changes, etc. I think we're also generally in favor 
(within reason, case by case basis, etc) of taking patches to the browser itself for things which make downstream 
packaging easier or less complicated.

best,
-Richard

On 12/17/22 00:06, Jim Newsome wrote:
> Possibly of interest to browser and/or guix folks -
> 
> I was experimenting with the [Guix System Distro] on my laptop, and managed to get Tor Browser Bundle running with a 
> relatively new feature `--emulate-fhs`. Details below. I haven't messed with it too much yet, so I wouldn't be surprised 
> if the runtime dependency list below is missing some, which may result in runtime errors.
> 
> It'd be nice to get it packaged properly, but probably not high priority in terms of wide user reach. It's essentially 
> an OS for people who think [NixOS] is too mainstream ;P
> 
> Maybe I'll get around to poking at it sometime; they have other firefox variants in there (icecat), so that might be a 
> reasonable starting point.
> 
> [Guix System Distro]: https://guix.gnu.org/
> [NixOS]: https://nixos.org/
> 
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: re: Drafting a Guix blog post on the FHS container
> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2022 17:39:21 -0600
> From: Jim Newsome <jim at sporksmith.net>
> To: john.kehayias at protonmail.com, help-guix at gnu.org, guix-devel at gnu.org
> 
> Sorry for (presumably) breaking threading; I came across this online and don't see a way to set my in-reply-to-email 
> header properly.
> 
> Anyways just thought I'd mention that I recently learned about this feature, and was able to use it to get a downloaded 
> [Tor Browser Bundle] running with:
> 
> 
> ```
> guix shell \
>    --container \
>    --network \
>    --emulate-fhs \
>    --preserve='^DISPLAY$'
>    --share=/run/user/$(id -u)/gdm \
>    openssl at 1 \
>    libevent \
>    pciutils \
>    dbus-glib \
>    bash \
>    libgccjit \
>    libcxx \
>    gtk+ \
>    coreutils \
>    grep \
>    sed \
>    file \
>    alsa-lib \
>    -- \
>    ./start-tor-browser.desktop -v
> ```
> 
> `--preserve='^DISPLAY$'` and `--share=/run/user/$(id -u)/gdm` are to get access to the display. I'm not sure the second 
> parameter is universally correct; I reverse-engineered it via roughly `ps aux | grep -- -auth`.
> 
> The `-v` parameter to the browser script keeps it from trying to background itself, which otherwise causes the container 
> and browser to terminate.
> 
> It'd ultimately be nice to package the Tor Browser Bundle properly for guix, but it's nice to be able to use it this way 
> in the meantime.
> 
> -Jim
> 
> [Tor Browser Bundle]: https://www.torproject.org/download/
> _______________________________________________
> tor-project mailing list
> tor-project at lists.torproject.org
> https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-project
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