[tor-reports] Pearl Crescent Report for June 2014

[Mark Smith]

Tor-related work that the Pearl Crescent team did in June
(Kathy Brade and Mark Smith):

* Firefox updater for TBB:  We finished the changes to the
   Gitian-based build process; the plan is to merge these changes
   into master (TBB 4.x) but initially leave the updater code
   disabled.
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4234

   We also upgraded the TBB 4.x builds to use the latest stable
   release of MinGW-w64.  As part of this work, we filed a Mozilla
   bug r.e. building the Firefox updater code using MinGW-w64 and
   worked with Mozilla engineers to agree on a solution.
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12406
     https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1022847

   We also filed a new trac bug so we remember to check whether the
   standalone Vidalia packages need to be tweaked to work with
   the revised on-disk TBB directory structure.
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12393

   Finally, we worked on modeling server load for the updater and
   pulled together requirements for an update responder script.

* Created developer builds of TBB on a new Ubuntu 14.04 LTS system.
   This was mostly an exercise in system setup and slogging through
   known TBB build issues / stalls.  One thing worth noting is that
   we did not get LXC-based builds to work.  We also encountered the
   same TBB 3.6.2 Mozilla langpack build reproducibility issue that
   others found.
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12431
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12382

* Assisted with assorted TBB issues, including:
     "torbutton says Tor is down when accessing remote 'tor' daemon"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10500

     "Make bundles featuring meek"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10935

     "Tor won't open on Mac"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12256

     "Rewrite fix-info-plist.sh with Python plistlib"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12400

     "many PT components ship with "test" or "tests" directories"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12454

* Worked on various Tor Launcher issues, including:
     "Unable to run Tor Browser"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11023

     "Text in TorLauncher dialogs does not fit the dialog size"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11471

     "Tor Launcher should set ClientTransportPlugin..."
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11512

     "Change &#160 to   in network-settings.dtd"
     https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/11699

* Triaged bugs and added TorBrowserTeam201406 and TorBrowserTeam201407
   keywords.

* Participated in the weekly TBB dev meetings on IRC and in various
   design discussions on IRC and on the mailing lists.

Plans for July:
* Get the Firefox-based updater for TBB (bug 4234) ready for
   alpha testing.  This will require working with other Tor Project
   team members to address deployment issues (update responder script,
   hosting of MAR files, etc.)

* Contribute to TBB in whatever way we can, including assisting
   with migration of browser patches to the Firefox 31 code base.

* Continue to add polish to Tor Launcher with specific focus on
   usability issues.

-- 
Mark Smith
Pearl Crescent
http://pearlcrescent.com/