[tor-project] PieroV's Monthly Status Report, January 2023

[Pier Angelo Vendrame]

Hi everyone!
Here is my status report for January 2023.

This month I worked on several small tasks to polish many small details, 
especially on the tor-browser-build repository.
For example, I removed a shim used to launch tor on Tor Browser for 
macOS. It was used to declare some Python 2.x compatibility variables 
for obfs3, so it has not been needed for a long time [0].
Another macOS task was switching our DMG installers from ISO images to 
HFS filesystems to show a custom volume image [1]. This was quite 
involved because it introduced reproducibility issues, for which I had 
to patch the HFS creation to use a deterministic volume UUID [2].
All were part of a parent ticket about cleaning up the "Bundle-Data" 
directory of Tor Browser [3].
In a somehow related topic, I reviewed how we ship extensions [4]. 
Moving them to the distribution directory might allow us to enable some 
profile repair tools if needed, or multiple profiles.

On the Tor Browser side, I fixed a problem when running the browser for 
a long time [5]. I did not handle stdout correctly when switching from 
nsIProcess to Subprocess. Shoutout to the members of our community for 
finding the cause, and apologies for any inconvenience it caused!
Then, I investigated and tried to remove some calls to home that we 
inherited from Firefox [6].
Finally, I went back to improving our portable profile directory patch. 
I feel we are reaching its final form.

Best,
Pier

[0] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41569
[1] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/28124
[2] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/40744
[3] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/40732
[4] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/40714
[5] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41549
[6] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40788