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

[Pier Angelo Vendrame]

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

During the first half of the month, I continued working on the Tor 
Browser rebase onto Firefox 115. First, I fixed some runtime errors, 
which involved a quick refactor of some old code from legacy XPCOM 
components to JS modules.
Then, I rebased the various 13.0 branches (Tor Browser, Base Browser, 
and Mullvad Browser) onto Firefox 115 beta 5. They were approved and 
merged [0][1][2], but I rebased everything once again onto the first 
actual release of Firefox 115 [3], which Mozilla will publish tomorrow.
I also reviewed the Android parts, which Dan worked on [4][5].

In addition to that, I helped with a couple of minor fixes for the 12.5 
stable release [6][7].

Then, in the second half of June, I worked on refactoring the legacy of 
Torbutton [8]:
- Move everything to modules instead of JS run on Firefox's chrome.
- Refactor and modernize the code in general to avoid XPCOM unless needed.
- Improve the integration with the rest of our patch set.
- Remove any direct usage of the control port. It also involved the 
creation of a new backend for the circuit display. I hope it will also 
make the Arti integration easier when the time comes.
- Survey the functionalities we developers know less about and create 
documentation to be sure we do not break them in the process (e.g., [9]).
I have a branch with many of these changes ready, but I want to improve 
others more. However, I am waiting to get [3] merged before opening MRs 
for them.

I am happy with how the major yearly rebase has gone so far.
We will try to have 13.0a1 (the first alpha of 13.0) already based on 
115, even though we still have to do some work on Android.
We still have not audited all Mozilla's changes between 102 and 115. 
However, we have almost three months until the 13.0 release (scheduled 
around the end of September/beginning of October, when 102 ESR goes EOL).

Best,
Pier

[0] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests/678
[1] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests/679
[2] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser/-/merge_requests/62
[3] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests/694
[4] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/firefox-android/-/merge_requests/1
[5] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/firefox-android/-/merge_requests/2
[6] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests/658
[7] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41815
[8] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40938
[9] 
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/team/-/wikis/Enviroment-variables-and-related-preferences